Listen to the Moon by Michael Morpurgo
Like a wild goat she scrambled over the rocks and skipped through the shallows. Everywhere she went, Alfie followed – and keeping up with her was not at all easy. He had never known her to be so agile, so fleet of foot. Breathless with excitement, she seemed to be making new discoveries all the time, like a hound at the scent, seeking and then finding. And many of these discoveries prompted some kind of dramatic re-enactment in mime and movement, all of them quite incomprehensible and mystifying to Alfie.
But she was – Alfie could see it – trying harder than ever before, mouthing words that would not speak themselves properly, and talking all the while with her hands as best she could. All her guttural utterings, and the clicking of her tongue, reminded Alfie of old Ma Stebbings down at Atlantic Cottage on Popplestone Bay, who had been born deaf, he’d been told, and with a cleft palate. Not a word she said did anyone understand. She too let her hands and her eyes do her speaking for her, but even so Alfie could never make much sense of what she was trying to tell him. The trouble was that old Ma Stebbings was liable to get angry with you for not understanding, and then you’d have to walk away, and she’d get angrier still.
It was different with Lucy. She didn’t get angry, she just kept on trying to explain herself; and besides, with Lucy, he really wanted to know what she was trying to say, wanted to encourage her to keep trying.
It was hard though, and confusing, because the stories she was trying to tell him, so far as he could make out, were stories that seemed to have little connection with one another, like scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. One moment she was pointing out to sea, towards the lighthouse on Round Island. Then she sat herself down cross-legged on the sand and began drawing something in it that looked like a cucumber. Now she was picking up a limpet shell and pretending to eat it.
Up on her feet again, and taking his hand, she raced back to the Pest House, pointed out to him the long since discarded shells littered everywhere, then collapsed on the ground in the fireplace, clutching her stomach and groaning, clearly pretending to be in pain. A moment later, spotting a gull sitting on the chimney, she was on her feet and gesticulating angrily at him and hurling stones. Discovering an old stick – driftwood it looked like – in among the bracken in the Pest House, she limped about like Uncle Billy did when he was being Long John Silver – what Uncle Billy had to do with all this, Alfie had no idea – and then she was off again, out of the Pest House and running down the track, only to throw herself down suddenly on all fours, acting as if she was a dog drinking out of a puddle; all of this accompanied by much waving of hands, and an outpouring of attempted words that sounded more like gargling to Alfie than anything else.
Alfie could understand something of what each mime meant, but they were all acted out so fast, one after another, that together they made very little sense at all. He asked her often to slow down, to show him again, but by then she was always off and running.
They ended up at midday on top of the great rock behind the Pest House. He wanted to sit her down, have the bread and cheese they’d brought in the boat with them. He thought this might be the moment to try to get her to calm down and talk. But neither talk nor food seemed to interest her. All she would do was wave and jump up and down at the sight of every passing fishing boat. And when she tired of that she lay back on the rock, looking up at the sky. Pointing at the half-moon still up there, she began humming her tune. She patted the rock beside her, inviting Alfie to come and join her. They hummed together then. After a while, they were silent, listening to the sea, to the wind, to the oystercatchers, watching the gulls wheeling and crying above them.
“They don’t like us much, do they?” Alfie said. “I think they want us to go. About time we did, I suppose.”
Lucy didn’t need his help climbing down any more than she had on the way up. When she reached the bottom, and she was there long before he was, she fell over, clutching her ankle and grimacing in pain. Alfie thought for a moment this was for real – the acting was that convincing. But then he saw the smile in her eyes. He remembered then the swollen ankle she had had when his father brought her home. “Your ankle, it happened here then, didn’t it?” he asked.
She nodded. That was the moment Alfie finally found he could begin to work out her story, put two and two together.
“So you rowed here, right?” he said. “And you lived in the Pest House – there’s nowhere else, is there? And you ate limpets, and you were up on the giant rock waving so someone would come and find you. And no one did, did they? Not till we came along, and you were half dead by then. But what’s the cucumber you drew in the sand got to do with anything? And I still don’t know where you came from, do I? We got to know everything, Lucy, don’t you see? We got to. You got to tell us. And where’s the rowing boat? You couldn’t have come on your own. Who brought you? And that water flask, who gave you that?”
She was looking at him as he was speaking, and thinking hard. He could see she was. She wanted to answer him. She was going to tell him. Before he knew it, she was up on her feet and running again, leaping over the heather, and racing down the track towards the beach.
Alfie thought he must have upset Lucy with all his questions. He ran after her, calling her back. By the time he found her again, she was on her knees in the sand, a cuttlefish shell in her hand, and drawing feverishly. She didn’t look up even when he was standing right over her. She just kept drawing. It looked like a cucumber again, a giant cucumber. But there was something coming out of the top of it. A spout! It was a whale! It had to be a whale! At once the Jonah story came back to him, one of those silly stories going around just after Lucy had first been found, that she’d been carried in on the back of a whale.
But beside the whale she was drawing a boat, a rowing boat, and now there were three men sitting in it, one of them holding something up in his hand – the flask, the water flask. The drawing done, Lucy sat back on her heels, and, taking a deep breath or two, spoke very deliberately and clearly. Pointing down at the man in the boat, the one with the flask, she said: “Wilhelm. Wasser. Gut.”
Words again! The same words. But German words. Alfie was already thinking that he would keep this a secret, and just hope that she never uttered another word when they got back. To speak would only be to betray herself.
She bent forward suddenly and drew another figure in the boat, a figure holding something – a teddy bear, with a smile on his face. Her teddy bear. Laughing, she sat back again, pointing to herself.
“Ninny,” she cried. “Nincompoop! Ninny! Nincompoop!”
Lucy giggled out the words time and again. Alfie could see she was simply loving the sound of herself, revelling in this sudden ability to speak, as surprised by it as he was. Alfie was loving the sound of the word too, but for another reason altogether. It was an English word. English! English! Nincompoop. Father would call him that sometimes, Mother too. How could she possibly know such a word unless she was English? In his relief, he was laughing with her, then dancing and prancing with her, all over her drawing in the sand, both of them echoing those words, those wonderful, beautiful words, over and over, louder and louder, until every gull on the island seemed to be airborne and shrieking in alarm. Or was that laughter too?
Alfie wanted only to get back home fast now, as fast as possible. He could not wait to break the good news. He would take the quicker way home. He sailed away from the beach at St Helen’s and out towards the lighthouse on Round Island, keeping well clear of the dangerous waters round Men-a-Vaur. He knew that, whatever the weather, near Round Island the waves would always be heaving in from the open ocean. But it was safe enough on a day like this, and he had sailed it, often enough before, with his father. Wind and tide and current would be with them. And anyway, he thought, it would be exciting. And so it was, the little boat keeling over as she flew along, up and down the waves, each one of them a mountain to climb, both Alfie and Lucy laughing and screaming in wild exhilaration borne of shared fear and shared delight. They rode the
Soaked through by now, and breathless with it all, they came out of the wind and waves, and into the quieter, more sheltered waters of the Tresco Channel. Alfie was quite sure now that their day on St Helen’s had achieved more than Dr Crow or any of them could ever have hoped for. Lucy had most certainly remembered. How much, Alfie did not know. But she had remembered. And she had spoken words too – admittedly, mostly just the same two words again and again – but those words were English. There had been, without question, some reawakening of her memory and some rediscovery of her voice. This had to be just the beginning, Alfie thought. Surely, after this, the words would flow more easily and all her memories would in time come flooding back. Very soon now they would know who Lucy Lost was and all about her.
It was low tide by the time they sailed into Green Bay. No one seemed to be about except for Uncle Billy. The Hispaniola was high and dry on the sand. He was down on the beach, working on the rudder. Then he was walking round the boat. He appeared to be checking it all over, examining the hull, patting it affectionately. He must have seen them coming in through the shallows, but he did not acknowledge them. He was busy, they knew that, and therefore best left alone, so they did not bother him.
Alfie had thrown out the anchor, and was taking down the sail when he looked up, and saw Zebediah Bishop and his gang coming along the beach. And then they were charging across the sand towards them, the whole pack of them, shouting as they came, as if they were baying for blood. Alfie steeled himself for what was to come. They could have made a run for it, but there was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. Home was too far away across the field. They’d never get there. Lucy was holding the water flask almost as if she was going to use it as a weapon.
“S’all right,” Alfie told her, trying to sound as if he believed it. “They’re just having a bit of fun. They don’t want a fight.” They were only yards away now. Tough it out, Alfie told himself. Whatever you do, just tough it out, don’t show them you’re frightened.
“What do you want, Zeb?” he asked.
“Weren’t at school, was you?” Zeb replied. Then at once he turned his attention to Lucy. “Where you been off to then? Back to Fritziland, is it?” he scoffed. “Have a nice time, did you? Been bayoneting little children, have you?”
He made a lunge for the water flask and snatched it from her. “What’s this then?” He unscrewed the top, drank from it, then spat it out, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Hun water,” he said. “Horrible Hun water, horrible just like you.” Then he was looking at the flask more closely, examining it. “Well, well,” he said, “would you believe it! S’got writing here. You know what it says? I’ll read it for you, shall I? It says, in big letters, Berlin. Berlin? Look at this, lads,” he went on, holding it up, showing it to them, his voice becoming ever more threatening and triumphant. “Now, we done our capitals at school, and we all know Berlin ain’t in England. That’s cos it’s in Germany, isn’t it?”
As the crowd closed in around him, Alfie put up his fists. “Don’t you come no closer, Zeb,” he said, “or I’ll give you a bleeding nose. I will.” He could feel Lucy hiding behind him now, clinging to his coat, hanging on to him, her forehead pressed into his back. There was yelling all around them. Alfie stood his ground.
Suddenly Lucy sprang out from behind him and leapt on Zeb, taking him and everyone else completely by surprise. But the surprise was quickly over. Alfie was knocked from behind to the ground. Then the punching and kicking began. As he curled himself into a ball, he saw Lucy sitting astride Zeb and pummelling him, but then the others pulled her off, and began kicking her too as she tried to crawl over towards him. Alfie looked up into the faces above him, all laughing and howling and chanting, “Horrible Hun! Horrible Hun! Horrible Hun!”
QUITE SUDDENLY, THE KICKING STOPPED, the chanting stopped. When Alfie looked up, the boys were scattering in all directions. Only then did he see and understand why. Uncle Billy had Zeb by the collar, lifting him off his feet for a moment or two, then dropping him to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Whimpering through his choking, Zeb staggered away up the beach. Uncle Billy picked up the water flask Zeb had dropped and gave it to Lucy. He helped them both to their feet and brushed them down. Then he said, punching the air: “Yo-ho-ho!”
“Yo-ho-ho!” they echoed back. Then all three of them were chanting it again and again, Lucy too, all of them punching the air together. “Come. Look,” Uncle Billy said, taking each of them by the hand. “My Hispaniola, she is finished.” Hand in hand, they walked across Green Bay towards the lugger. They stood there, looking up at it, admiring it. The boat gleamed from bow to stern, the sails flapping and slapping in the breeze, the Jolly Roger flying from the masthead. She was magnificent.
“Tomorrow,” Uncle Billy was saying, “I sail for Treasure Island. There are seven seas out there, and I shall sail them all, till I find it.” And, without another word, he left them, walking up the beach to the boathouse.
That was when Peg came wandering along the beach to find them. So they had a ride home, but not straight home. Peg wouldn’t go straight home. They had to go where she wanted to take them, all around the island, under Samson Hill, past Rushy Bay and Popplestone and Hell Bay, and, all the way, neither spoke a word, until they were up on the moor above Shipman Head. There Peg decided to stop and graze. They dismounted and sat on the soft thrift, gazing out over the ocean, both lost in thought.
After a while, Alfie spoke. “Father says that’s America over there, over two thousand miles away across the Atlantic. I’m going there one day. They got all sorts over there. Mountains, deserts, buildings as tall as the sky, cowboys and Indians, and cars and trains, hundreds of cars. I’ve seen pictures in magazines. Uncle Billy showed me. He’s been there. He’s been everywhere. He won’t go to Treasure Island though. That’s just him talking as he does. He’s always saying that, how he’s going off round the world again one day. But he won’t. You been to America, have you, Lucy?” He didn’t expect her to answer, and she didn’t.
“Lucy,” he went on, “you said Yo-ho-ho just now. You said Nincompoop. You said Ninny. You said Wilhelm, and those other German words. You said Piano. You can say others. You can talk, you know you can. You got to tell me. I got to know. As soon as everyone hears about your water flask – and they will, believe me, they soon will – they’ll think what they want to think. And I got to be able to stand there and say for certain that you’re English. Trouble is, I don’t know what to believe any more. One minute you say German words, and the next you say English ones. But then – I been thinking – you could have heard Father calling me a nincompoop, or Mother maybe, couldn’t you? And you were just copying. What are you, Lucy? Who are you?” He picked up the water flask, and looked at it. “It says ‘Berlin’, Lucy.”
She said nothing, but sat stony-faced, her chin on her knees, looking at Peg grazing in among the heather. She seemed not to have been listening to him at all, to have gone back into her shell.
Back home, she stayed that way all evening, refusing her food, not bothering to put on a record even, wandering restlessly about the kitchen, looking for some time at each of the drawings on the walls, lost in them, it seemed, and not interested at all in anything or anyone.
Of course, Jim and Mary wanted to know everything that had happened to them that day on St Helen’s and questioned Alfie closely, about the actual words Lucy had spoken, and about the fight on Green Bay, and how Uncle Billy had come to their rescue. But it was the water flask that most concerned them. “Trouble is,” his father said, “Zebediah was right. It’s writ here. Kaisers Fabrik. Berlin. You can’t argue with that, can you, Marymoo? Not even if you want to. It’s German. Either she found it washed up on the island, or someone gave it to her. And I know which they’ll be thinking when Lucy and Alfie go to school on Monday – and they won’t have no Uncle Billy to loo
“They won’t be going,” Mary said firmly. “I’m not sending them off to that school, not on Monday, not ever, if it comes to that. You stay home, Alfie. We all stay home together, look after one another, eh?” She reached out then and caught Lucy by the arm as she passed by. “Lucy dear,” she said. “Come and sit down, won’t you? You must be tired out. Would you like a story? Shall I take you upstairs now, and read you a story?”
Lucy shook her head.
“Alfie then? You’d read to her, wouldn’t you, Alfie?” Lucy shook her head again, then left the room, but she was down again in a few moments, with a book in her hand. She took it over to Jim and gave it to him.
“I don’t read very good, Lucy,” he said. “I mean, I can read, course I can. But I didn’t do much of that schooling lark.” She pressed the book into his hands, insisting, and then got up on to his lap. Leaning her head back against him, she closed her eyes and waited.
Jim had no choice. He opened the book. “The Ugly Duckling,” Jim began.
“That’s her favourite, that is,” Alfie said. “I’ve read that one to her plenty of times.”
Jim read hesitantly, stumbling over the words sometimes, and often stopping to apologise when he did. But that didn’t seem to bother Lucy. She may have had her eyes closed, but even so Alfie could tell. He was quite sure she was listening to every word, concentrating. After a while, she opened her eyes. She was staring hard at one of the pictures on the wall, and frowning.
With Jim still reading, she got off his lap and walked across the kitchen to the gramophone. Alfie thought she was going to put a record on, but she didn’t. She simply stood there, gazing up at the picture. It was one of several she had drawn of the giant with the moustache sitting down by a lake, reading a book to the ducks gathered around his feet. Then, very deliberately, she went and fetched her pencil box from the kitchen dresser, took out a pencil and wrote something on the bottom of the picture. She put her pencil back and went upstairs, leaving Jim still reading the story. He stopped then.