Listen to the Moon by Michael Morpurgo

  As they sailed along Pentle Bay, they had to tack all the way. So it took time. Lucy caught no more fish, but she was still intent on her line, looking up only when she was distracted by the birds. Alfie could see how she loved to see the cormorants standing like sentinels on the rocks, wings outstretched to dry, the herons and egrets stock-still in the shallows. Alfie told her the names of all the birds they were seeing, where they nested, what fish they liked. They saw seals too, not close, but each sighting, however far away, of a shining, whiskery head bobbing up and turning to gaze at them was greeted by Lucy with squeals of joy.

  It was Alfie who spotted the school of porpoises dipping and diving through the sea in Crow Sound, the curve of their backs glinting in the morning sun. “Must be twenty or thirty of them at least!” Alfie cried. “Never seen so many in all my life. Isn’t that something, Lucy? Isn’t that something?”

  Lucy was up on her feet in the boat and clapping her hands in wild delight, laughing out loud as he had never heard her before, a joyful, ringing laugh, ringing out like bells, Alfie thought, laughter so close to words, so near to talking.

  Suddenly, ahead of the school of porpoises, way out in front, Alfie noticed there was a much larger one, who was not swimming as the others were, but more stately it seemed, and, when he rose each time to the surface, he blew. It was some moments before Alfie realised it couldn’t be a porpoise at all, that it had to be a whale, a pilot whale! Alfie had seen them before often enough, but never close to porpoises like this.

  “Whale!” he yelled. “It’s a whale, Lucy. Look!” Lucy had seen it too by now. But the sighting didn’t excite her, as Alfie had expected. Instead, it was troubling her, Alfie could see that. The laughter was gone. She simply stared at it, more in fear than wonder, he thought. “He won’t hurt us,” he told her. “Gentle as lambs they are, Lucy. Beautiful, isn’t he?”

  Both whale and porpoises disappeared shortly after. They looked for them and looked for them, but they didn’t come back. Alfie felt strangely alone on the ocean without them, sad they were gone. Lucy seemed to feel much the same way. She didn’t want to fish any more, but instead sat there huddled under her blanket, clutching her teddy bear, gazing out to sea, alone in her thoughts.

  So far as he could, Alfie kept close to the shore all the way, where the sea was calmer, before having to steer into the faster, rougher water past Lizard Point. St Helen’s was now in sight. For some time, Alfie had been looking out for some sign that Lucy might be beginning to recognise where she was going. There had been none. And there was still none now, as they came sailing in over the sandbar towards the island, the Pest House quite visible; and behind it, dominating the whole island, and rising sheer from the bracken, the great rock of St Helen’s. Alfie hauled down the sail, took up the oars and rowed in through the weed, through the shallows.

  There was little wind now though, and less and less as they neared the island. There was a gull on every rock it seemed, eyeing them with deep suspicion, menace in every eye. It was as if they hadn’t moved, Alfie thought, since the last time he was here. Alfie leapt out into the shallows. He picked up Lucy, carried her to the water’s edge, and set her down. Pulling her blanket round her shoulders, she looked about her only briefly. Then, teddy bear in hand, she bent down at once and began looking for shells. There was still no sign that she had recognised anything at all.

  By the time Alfie had finished dragging the boat up the beach and throwing out the anchor, Lucy was walking away from him, up over the sand towards the Pest House. He had expected her to wait for him, to want to stay close to him as she usually did. He called after her, but she walked on, over the pebbles up towards the top of the beach, and then over the dunes beyond. She waited for him there, and as he came up to her, much to his surprise, reached out, took his hand in hers, and held it tight. She seemed quite unable to take her eyes off the Pest House.

  She led him there now, along the sandy path towards the door. From the chimney top a gull looked down on them. Lucy noticed it and clapped her hands at him, shooing him away. When he flew off, shrieking, she turned and smiled at Alfie, pleased with herself, he thought. Then he thought something else too. She had frightened off the gull, not just for fun – Lucy didn’t do things like that. She had done it because this was her home, not the gull’s. This was her place, and she knew it.

  Taking Alfie by the hand once more, she stepped into the Pest House. She made straight for the fireplace, taking him with her. She knew exactly where she was going. She reached in under the lintel of the chimney, feeling for something, and finding it. When she turned round, she was holding a flask, a water flask. She handed Alfie her teddy bear to hold. Then she unscrewed the flask, put it to her mouth and drank.

  “Wasser,” she said, offering it to him with a smile. “Gut.”

  “WASSER. GUT.” Thinking of those words now, all these years later, and of my miraculous rescue, it is as impossible to believe as it was then. It seemed as if I must be in a dream, because I could make no sense of anything, and dreams, as we all know, don’t make sense. I did not remember, and had no idea, how it was I had come to be there on the piano in the middle of the ocean, clutching a teddy bear. I only knew I was hearing words and seeing things that I did not understand. I did not comprehend then that the language I was hearing was German, nor that the giant black whale-ship that had surfaced from the sea nearby was in fact a submarine. The truth was that German was not a language I knew at all, and I had no idea then what a submarine looked like.

  To me, they were all part of a strange, blurred vision, a dream I was living through. I imagined that this dream might be the beginning of dying, that when I came out of my dream I would be dead. I did not mind any more about dying. Perhaps I was too cold, too tired, too sad. I simply accepted that whatever was going to happen would happen. There was inside me a great emptiness. There was no pain, no fear. I was void of all feeling, except cold.

  So I did not resist or struggle as my rescuer carried me down into the waiting life raft. I felt no relief at the time, no joy at my rescue, no sense of what was happening to me, when other hands were reaching for me and grabbing me. As they rowed me across the sea towards the whale-ship, I looked up and saw a kind of iron-clad turret, tall and high above the middle of the ship, and men clustered there, leaning over and shouting down at us across the water.

  There were three sailors in the life raft, all of them bearded – I do remember noticing that. I was sitting in the boat beside the one who had climbed up on to the piano and rescued me. He had his arm round me and was holding on to me tightly, talking to me all the time. I knew from the gentleness in his voice that these must be words of comfort, but could not understand a thing he was saying.

  The two other sailors rowed hard through the sea, every stroke deep and long, cheered on all the way by the sailors watching us from the whale-ship, which seemed to grow, in both length and height, before my eyes as we came closer to it. It occurred to me then that I was right, that I was dying inside my dream, that this journey across the water was indeed part of dying. Some old familiar story echoed in my head, that to be rowed across the water was how it happened, the journey from one life to another, from one world to the next.

  Then we were alongside the whale-ship and strong hands were helping me, hauling me up a ladder, and at last into the turret. Every face I looked up into was pale and bearded, with sunken eyes, all ghostly in appearance, yet these men were neither sad nor frightening nor ghoulish as ghosts should be. Most of the faces were smiling and laughing, as they peered down at me. They gripped me with cold, hard hands, dirty hands too I saw, but real hands, alive hands, not the hands of ghosts. And they smelt alive as well, of damp and smoke and oil. They smelt of live people. They wore long leather coats that were slippery and wet to the touch.

  It was only when I found myself standing there up on the turret, surrounded by these men, who all looked upon me in utter amazement, that I truly began to realise I must be still in the land o
f the living, that these were certainly not ghosts at all, and that I was neither dead nor dying. It came to me then that when I woke up from this dream I might well be alive as they were. But alive or dead, I did not much mind. I was beyond caring.

  I found myself being manhandled down a ladder into the half-dark belly of the whale-ship. Then my sailor, my rescuer, hand firm on my shoulder, was ushering me down a long passageway – it was like a tunnel, dimly lit, lined with pipes and tubes and wires – and on both sides of me were men lying there, gazing at me from their bunks and hammocks. Everywhere there was the stench of wet clothes and unwashed feet, and toilets. The fumes of oil and smoke were heavy in the air. They called out to me. From their tone, from their eyes, I felt they were greeting me. Some of them, as I passed by, were making jokes and laughing. But I knew they were not making fun of me, because they were not laughing at me, rather laughing because I was there, a stranger in their ship, and they were pleased to see me. They seemed fascinated by me, intrigued. I didn’t like to be stared at, of course, but I sensed that it was only out of curiosity, that there was no hint of malice behind their eyes.

  Then ahead of me, from far away, from somewhere at the darker end of this gloomy tunnel, I heard the sound of music playing. It was a song I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. It was music, and as I walked it was playing louder all the time. The gramophone, I discovered, was hidden away in a corner up against the steel hull of the whale-ship. It was steel everywhere I looked, above my head, under my feet, behind the web of pipes and tubes. Some of the men were singing along with the song on the gramophone or humming or whistling it. It came to me then as I made my way past them that these men were singing it for me, that it was their way of welcoming me into their boat. I didn’t mind the stench so much after that, nor the staring eyes.

  My sailor stopped me, pulled aside a curtain, and, hands on my shoulders, guided me into a small cabin, no more than a cupboard space, with a narrow bed and a few shelves. There was hardly room to turn round. He handed me a blanket and a long shirt, and indicated to me that I should get out of my wet clothes, then went out, drawing the curtain behind him. I wondered why I was suddenly unsteady on my feet. Then I knew we were moving, the whole ship thundering and rattling around me. Beyond the curtain, the music played on and the sailors sang on.

  I got out of my wet clothes and into the shirt, which was so long and so large that it hung around me like a tent. It was then that I realised to my horror that I was no longer holding the teddy bear in my hand, that I must have let it go, left it on the piano, dropped it in the sea or left it in the life raft that had brought me to this whale-ship. Somewhere, somehow, I had lost it. I would never see it again. I had never in all my life felt more devastated and lonely as I did then, as I did in that moment. I lay down on the bed, pulled the blanket round me, and turned my face into the pillow, and wished I was dead. I slept then, for how long I did not know.

  I woke and turned over. There was a man in a peaked cap and leather coat sitting beside the bed on a camp chair. He was reading a book. I sat up. He saw I was awake and closed the book. I felt drops of water falling on my head, dripping on to my face as I looked up. He smiled, reached forward and wiped my forehead and my cheeks with his handkerchief. He was gentle about it, and smiling too.

  “Do not worry,” he said. “There is not a hole in the boat. It is what you call, in English, condensation, I think. We are under the water now, so there is not much air, and what we have left is wet, damp and full of moisture – little drops of water, you understand. We have forty-five men down here, all breathing this air, and people are warm. We make heat. There are engines too, which make a lot of heat. This is why it rains a little inside the boat. So, as you see, condensation.” He handed me from the table a plate of bread and sausage. “Here,” he said. “Some food. I am sorry. It is not much, and not very good either. I should rather say it is horrible. But it is all we have, and I am sure you are hungry. I think, when you are hungry, it does not matter what the food tastes like.”

  The bread, I noticed then, was covered in a strange white furry fluff. “It is bread, I promise you,” he went on, pushing back his cap, “and quite good, but we call it ‘rabbit’. I think you can see why we call it this. It is like fur on a white rabbit. It grows on bread down here in these damp conditions. It is fungi, like mushrooms. It will not harm you. Later we have hot soup, good soup to warm you.”

  He spoke with a strong accent, but very slowly and correctly. “You are from the Lusitania, I think. Is this so?”

  I said nothing, not only because I could not understand what he was talking about, but because I knew by now that my voice would not work, that however hard I tried I would not be able to make the words to speak a reply.

  “Most unfortunate,” he went on. “Such loss of life is most regrettable, and the Lusitania was a fine ship. I wish to say that it was not my U-boat which sank your ship, but it might have been. I would have done the same. My father always said to me: ‘never apologise, never explain’. He was only half right, I think. I will not apologise, but I will explain. This is war. The Lusitania was supposed to be a liner, only for the transport of passengers. But she was carrying arms and ammunition and soldiers from America to England, which is of course quite against the rules of war. Even in war there must be rules.”

  The ship creaked and groaned around us. “That is the pressure of water on the hull. It happens when we are deep under the sea. Do not worry. She may leak and she may drip, but she is well made. She is tired though. We are all tired. Even the food is tired. You know how long it is since we left home? Twelve weeks and four days. No baths, no shaves. There is no water to spare for such things. But it is lucky for you, I think, that Seemann Wilhelm Kreuz was not tired this morning when he was up on watch. I thought he had gone mad, lost all his senses – this happens sometimes in U-boats, when we are on long voyages at sea.

  “He comes to me in my cabin – this is my cabin; that is my bed you are lying on. So, I am still asleep and he comes this morning and wakes me up. ‘Herr Kapitän,’ he says to me. ‘There is a piano floating on the sea off the starboard bow. And there is sitting on it, Herr Kapitän, a small girl.’ Of course I do not believe him. Who would? But then I go up into the conning tower and I look. And there you are.” He laughed then, and shook his head. “I could not believe my eyes!”

  The sausage, like the bread, did not look in the least tempting. But he was right. I was so hungry by now that I would have eaten anything. It was unlike any other sausage I had ever tasted – greasy, and full of gristle. But I did not mind one bit. I could not look at the bread as I bit into it. I ate it all the same, all of it.

  “So, gnädiges Fräulein, our rabbit is good, ja?” he said. “Seemann Kreuz says he does not know who you are, your name. Do you have a name? No? Very well. So I will tell you my name first. I am Kapitän Klausen of the Imperial German Navy. Now it is your turn? No? You are perhaps a little shy, ja? English? American perhaps? I hope you are one or the other, because English is the only other language I speak. I have English cousins. I spent holidays with them in the New Forest. We rode horses. And I can play cricket! There are not many Germans who can play cricket. I would say that if there were then maybe the Germans and the English could have a cricket match, instead of a war. We should all like that, I think.” He smiled at that, but was quickly serious again, reflective, sad even.

  “Most children are not as quiet as you,” he went on. “I know this. Sometimes I wish they were. My daughters, they talk all the time. They chatter like sparrows. Lotte and Christina – they are twins, but not identical. They are younger than you, seven years now. It is, I think, maybe because of them that you are here now on this U-boat. But it is because of my uncle too. You should know about my uncle. He was a sailor – we have had many sailors in our family. Many years ago, his ship, the Schiller, she was called, went on to the rocks on the Isles of Scilly, which is off the west coast of England. Many were drowned. My uncle was resc
ued from the ship by a lifeboat. He was saved by Englishmen, islanders from Scilly, who rowed out to the wreck in a little boat. Those people saved more than thirty German passengers and sailors, and buried the rest with respect. It is because of this act of courage and kindness that the order was given at the beginning of the war that no German warships will ever attack any boats of any kind around the Isles of Scilly. It was for this reason, and because these people saved the life of my uncle, that I agreed to stop the ship and pick you up. It is also because Seemann Wilhelm Kreuz and my crew also insisted we must.

  “But, little girl, whatever your name is, you are quite a problem for me, for all of us. When I saw you on the piano, in spite of all I have told you, I did not wish to stop. It is dangerous to stop, and it is also against the rules of the Imperial German Navy for a submarine to pick up survivors and take them on board. And as you know from school, I hope, rules are important and must be obeyed. But Seemann Wilhelm Kreuz, like me, has children at home – he has a boy – and he argued most respectfully but insistently that, having seen you, we could not leave you alone on the ocean to die. The other sailors on watch agreed with him. I have to explain that on a boat like this, all of us so close together and far from home are in constant danger. We work together. We live together, we may very well die together. We are like a family. A good father listens to his family. And a good Kapitän does the same.

  “So I asked every man on the boat. Should we stop to pick you up? Should we not? Every one of them was in agreement to bring you on board. And when I thought about it, thought of Lotte and Christina, and my uncle, and of the Schiller, I was in agreement too. Many of them, most of them, of course, have children of their own, and some of the young sailors on board are so young they are almost children themselves. What is it that we should do with you now? That is the question. A submarine on war patrol is no place for a child. I cannot take you back to Germany, where they might well court-martial me for bringing you on board. And so, since you are very likely English or American, I have decided to set a course for the nearest landfall in England. And do you know where this is? It is the Isles of Scilly. We are just a few hours away, and will be there by night-time. If the weather is good, if the night is dark enough and safe to do so, we shall surface, and find somewhere to put you ashore. We know from what happened when the Schiller went down that they are good and kind people there. You will be among friends, and safe, and we shall go home to our families. And so, all will be well.”