Bedtime Story - Stories For Sleep - Peter Pan Chapter One

Listen to the first Chapter of Peter Pan by J.M Barrie, whether your mind is feeling restless before sleep, or you would like something to focus on to awaken your imagination, just listen and let your mind drift away with us.
Background Music: Peaceful Garden - Noru

Transcript

Hello and welcome to tonight's sleep story.

I'm going to be reading Peter Pan by J.

M.

Barrie,

One of my personal favourite stories.

So please get cosy and we will journey to Neverland together.

Chapter 1.

Peter Breaks Through All children,

Except one,

Grow up.

And the way Wendy knew was this.

One day when she was two years old,

She was playing in a garden,

And she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother.

I suppose she must have looked rather delightful,

For Mrs Darling put her hand on her heart and cried,

Oh,

Why can't you remain like this forever?

This was all that passed between them on the subject,

But henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up.

You always know after you are two.

Two is the beginning of the end.

Of course they lived at fourteen,

And until Wendy came her mother was the chief one.

She was a lovely lady,

With a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth.

Her romantic mind was like tiny boxes,

One within the other,

That come from the puzzling East.

However many you discover,

There is always one more.

And her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get,

Though there it was perfectly conspicuous in the right hand corner.

The way Mr Darling won her was this.

The many gentlemen who had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her.

And they all ran to her house to propose,

Except Mr Darling,

Who took a cab and nipped in first so he got to her.

He got all of her except the innermost box and the kiss.

He never knew about the box and in time he gave up trying for the kiss.

Wendy thought Napoleon could have got it,

But I can picture him trying and then going off in a passion,

Slamming the door.

Mr Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him but respected him.

He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks and shares.

Of course no one really knows,

But he quite seemed to know and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made any woman respect him.

Mrs Darling was married in white,

And if at first she kept the books perfectly,

Almost gleefully,

As if it were a game.

Not so much as a Brussels sprout was missing,

But by and by whole cauliflowers dropped out and instead of them were pictures of babies without faces,

She drew them when she should have been totting up.

They were Mrs Darling's guesses.

Wendy came first,

Then John,

Then Michael.

For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether they would be able to keep her,

As she was another mouth to feed.

Mr Darling was frightfully proud of her,

But he was very honourable and he sat on the edge of Mrs Darling's bed holding her hand and calculating expenses while she looked at him imploringly.

She wanted to risk it,

Come what might,

But that was not his way.

His way was with a pencil and a piece of paper,

And if she confused him with suggestions,

He had to begin at the beginning again.

Now don't interrupt,

He would beg of her.

I have £1.

17 here and 2 and 6 at the office.

I can cut off my coffee at the office say 10 shillings,

Making 2,

9 and 6,

With your 18 and 3 makes 3,

9,

7,

With 5,

0,

0 in my cheque book makes 8,

9,

7.

Who is that moving?

8,

9,

7,

Dot and carry the 7,

Don't speak my own,

And the pound you lent to that man who came to the door,

Quiet child,

Dot and carry,

Child,

There you've done it.

Did I say 9,

9,

7?

Yes,

I said 9,

9,

7.

The question is,

Can we try it for a year on 9,

9,

7?

Of course we can George,

She cried,

But she was prejudiced in Wendy's favour,

And he was really the grander character of the two.

Remember mumps,

He warmed her almost threateningly,

And off he went again.

Mumps £1,

That is what I have put down,

But I dare say it will be more like 30 shillings,

Don't speak,

Measles 1,

5,

German measles half a guinea makes 2,

15,

6,

Don't waggle your finger,

Whooping cough say 15 shillings,

And so on it went.

And it added up differently each time,

But at last Wendy just got through,

With mumps reduced to 12,

6,

And the two kinds of measles treated as one.

There was the same excitement over John and Michael,

Had even the narrowest squeak,

But both were kept and soon you might have seen the three of them going in a row to Miss Folsom's kindergarten school accompanied by their nurse.

Mrs Darling loved to have everything just so,

And Mr Darling had a passion for being exactly like his neighbours,

So of course they had a nurse.

As they were poor owing to the amount of milk the children drank,

This nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog called Nana,

Who had belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her.

She had always thought children important,

However and the Darlings had become acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens where she spent most of her spare time peeping into the perambulators,

And was much hated by careless nursemaids whom she followed to their homes and complained of to their mistresses.

She proved to be quite a treasure of a nurse.

How thorough she was at bath time,

And up at any moment of the night if one of her charges made even the slightest cry.

Of course her kennel was in the nursery.

She had a genius for knowing when a cough is a thing to have no patience with and when it needs stocking around your throat.

She believed to her last day in old fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf and made sounds of contempt over all this new fangled talk about germs and so on.

It was a lesson in propriety to see her escorting the children to school,

Walking sedately by their side when they were all well behaved,

And butting them back into line if they strayed.

On John's footer days she never once forgot his sweater and she usually carried an umbrella in her mouth in case of rain.

There is a room in the basement of Miss Folsom's school where the nurses wait.

They sat on forms while Nana lay on the floor,

But that was the only difference.

They affected to ignore her as of an inferior social status to themselves and she despised their light talk.

She resented visits to the nursery from Mrs Darling's friends,

But if they did come she first whipped off Michael's pinafore and put him in one with blue braiding and smoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John's hair.

No nursery could possibly have been conducted more correctly and Mr Darling knew it,

Yet he sometimes wondered uneasily whether the neighbours talked.

He had his position in the city to consider.

Nana also troubled him in another way.

He had sometimes a feeling that she did not admire him.

I know she admires you tremendously George,

Mrs Darling would assure him,

And then she would sign to the children to be specially nice to father.

Lovely dances followed in which the only other servant,

Liza,

Was sometimes allowed to join.

Such a midget she looked in her long skirt and maid's cap,

Though she had sworn when engaged that she would never see ten again.

The gaiety of those romps and the gayest of all was Mrs Darling who would pirouette so wildly that all you could see of her was the kiss.

And then if you had dashed at her you might have got it.

There never was a simpler,

Happier family until the coming of Peter Pan.

Mrs Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children's minds.

It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for the next morning.

Repacking into their proper places the many articles that have been wandering during the day.

If you could keep awake,

But of course you can'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 had picked this thing up,

Making discoveries 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 up 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 have 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 for 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 most likely 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 first day at school,

Religion,

Fathers,

The round pond,

Needlework,

Murders,

Hangings,

Verbs that take the dative,

Chocolate pudding day,

Getting into braces,

Say 99,

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 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 still in a row you could say of them that they have each other's nose and so forth.

On 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 most compact.

Not large and sprawling you know with tedious distances between one adventure and another.

But nicely crammed.

When you play at it by day with the chairs and tablecloth it is not the least alarming.

But in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very real.

That is why there are night lights.

Occasionally in her travels through her children's minds Mrs Darling found things she could not understand.

And of those quite the most perplexing was the word Peter.

She knew of no Peter and yet here he was.

Here and there in John and Michael's minds.

While Wendy began to be sprawled all over with him.

The name stood out in bolder letters than any of the other words.

And as Mrs Darling gazed she felt 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 is 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 that they should not be frightened.

She had believed in him at the time but now that she was married and full of sense she quite doubted whether there was any such person.

Besides she said to Wendy he would be grown up by this time.

Oh no he isn't grown up Wendy assured her confidently.

He is just my size.

She meant that he was her size in both mind and body.

She didn't know how she knew she just knew it.

Mrs Darling consulted Mr Darling but he smiled poo poo.

Mark my words he said it is some nonsense Nana has 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 and 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 had 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 is Peter again.

Whatever do you mean Wendy?

It is so naughty of him to not wipe his feet Wendy said sighing.

She was a tidy child.

She explained in quite a matter of fact way that she thought Peter sometimes came to the nursery in the night and sat at the foot of her bed and played 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.

I think he comes in by the window she says.

My love it is 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 had been dreaming.

My child the mother cried.

Why did you not tell me that?

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 her breakfast.

Surely she must have been dreaming.

But on the other hand there were the leaves.

Mrs Darling examined them very 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 a drop of 30 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.

On the night we speak of all the children were once more in bed.

It happened to be Nana's evening off and Mrs Darling had bathed them and slung to them till one by one they had let go her hand and slid away to the land of sleep.

All were looking so safe and cosy that she smiled at her fears now and sat down tranquilly by the fire to sow.

It was something for Michael who on his birthday was getting into shirts.

The fire was warm however and the nursery dimly lit by three night lights and presently the sowing lay on Mrs Darling's lap.

Then her head nodded oh so gracefully.

She was asleep.

Look at the four of them,

Wendy and Michael over there,

John here and Mrs Darling by the fire.

There should have been a fourth night light.

Whilst she slept she had a dream.

She dreamt that the Neverland had come too near and that a strange boy had broken through from it.

He did not alarm her for she thought she had seen him before in the faces of many women who have no children.

Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of some mothers also.

But in her dream he had rent the film that obscures the Neverland and she saw Wendy and John and Michael peeping through the gap.

The dream by itself would have been a trifle.

But while she was dreaming the window of the nursery blew open and a boy did drop on the floor.

He was accompanied by a strange light no bigger than your fist which darted about the room like a living thing and I think it must have been this light that wakened Mrs Darling.

She started up with a cry and saw the boy and somehow she knew at once he was Peter Pan.

If you or I or Wendy had been there we should have seen that he was very like Mrs Darling's kiss.

He was a lovely boy clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of trees but the most entrancing thing about him was that he had all his first teeth.

When he saw she was a grown up he gnashed the little pearls at her.

Thank you for joining me for chapter 1 of Peter Pan by J.

M.

Barrie.

Make sure to like and subscribe.

And stay tuned for chapter 2 The Shadow.

.