The True Story of Mr Darling

Every night, in a warm English nursery in London, three children slept with the window open. This story is not about Peter Pan. And it is not about Wendy. It is about the man downstairs — a small anxious clerk in a charcoal morning coat who wanted, very badly, to be thought respectable. His name was Mr George Darling.

Mr Darling wore a bowler hat, a silver-grey silk cravat, and a pince-nez that was forever slipping down his nose. He worked in a City of London counting-house — high oak desks, brass lamps, and long columns of figures. He was exactly one minute early for the omnibus every morning, and he loved his three children more than he ever quite knew how to say.

In the Darling nursery there lived a great Newfoundland dog called Nana, who was the children's nurse. She turned down the coverlets. She warmed the slippers. And Mr Darling — who wanted the neighbours to think the Darlings had a proper English nursemaid — was, quietly and constantly, embarrassed by her.

One dinner-party evening his silver-grey cravat would not tie. He fussed. He fumed. Little Wendy stepped in on tiptoe and tied it for him in one clean twelve-year-old motion, and for one small moment he was almost happy. Then he lost his nerve over a glass of bitter medicine, and quietly, shamefully, he poured it into Nana's water bowl. Nana lifted her great noble head from the bowl and looked at him — not accusing, only knowing. And that was the beginning of the sorrow of Mr Darling.

In his small anxious pride he took Nana out into the back garden and chained her in the yard. And that very night the nursery window banged wide, and Peter Pan came, and the children flew away. Mr Darling stood in the empty doorway with his cowlick flying and his cravat askew, and he understood, all at once, exactly what he had done.

And so, for as long as the children were away, Mr Darling lived in Nana's kennel in the back garden. He carried it on his own back through the Kensington streets to the counting-house every morning — in his shirt-sleeves, passers-by staring — and he did not once look down. Because some grown-ups, when they are sorry, are sorry very quietly, and every single day, for a very long time. And when at last the nursery window opened again, and the children flew home — Mr Darling was there, waiting, with the second star to the right shining softly over the London rooftops.