Listen to the Moon

Wind and current and exhaustion were slowing Jim all the way. As he rowed into Green Bay, he was yelling for help with what little breath he had left. Dozens of islanders were hurrying along the beach, Mary among them, along with a gaggle of excited children, back from school by now, running along behind. Only Peg, the island’s workhorse, seemed unconcerned at their arrival, intent as she was on browsing the dunes.

As Jim brought the boat in to the shore, everyone came wading out through the shallows to meet them, to haul the boat in. Before Jim had time even to ship his oars, Mary had taken the girl from Alfie’s arms, and was carrying her up the beach. Alfie stayed to help his father out of the boat. He seemed unsteady on his feet, so Alfie held on to his arm for a few moments. Stumbling out of the water, he fell on his hands and knees on the wet sand, all his strength spent, his chest heaving to catch his breath. His head was spinning, his shoulders on fire. There was no part of him that was not aching.

Further up the beach Mary had laid the girl down on dry sand, and was kneeling over her. She was calling to them. “Who is she, Jimbo?” Mary was asking him. “Who is she? Where d’you find her?”

All Jim could do was shake his head. He couldn’t speak a word. A crowd was gathering by now, pushing and shoving to get a closer look, all of them full of questions. Mary waved everyone back. “Give her some air, for goodness’ sake. Child needs to breathe. She’s half dead, can’t you see? Get back! And someone send to St Mary’s for Dr Crow. Quick about it now! We’ll get her home, warm her up in front of the stove.” She touched the girl’s face with the back of her hand, felt her neck. “She’s shivering somethin’ terrible. She’s got a fever on her. We’ll use the cart. Someone fetch Peg, hitch her up and hurry up about it.”

Jim and Alfie found a way through the crowd. Just at that moment the girl’s eyes opened. She looked up in bewilderment at all the faces staring down at her. She was trying to sit up, trying to say something. Mary bent closer. “What is it, dear? What is it?”

It was only a whisper, and very few heard it. But Mary did, Alfie did. “Lucy,” said the girl. Then, as Mary laid her down again, her eyes closed and she lost consciousness once more.

They rushed her home to Veronica Farm in the cart, with Alfie leading Peg, and Mary riding in the back, holding the girl in her arms. Half the island was following along behind, it seemed, in spite of Mary telling them again and again that there was nothing they could do, and they should all go home. No one did. “Can you hurry that horse on, Alfie?” she said.

“She won’t go no faster, Mother,” Alfie told her. “You know Peg.”

“And I know you too, Alfie Wheatcroft,” she went on, with a certain tone in her voice. “Had a nice day at school, did you?” Alfie didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. For a while, neither of them spoke. “Father tells me it was you that found her,” Mary began.

“S’pose,” Alfie replied.

“Well then, when all’s said and done, I reckon it was a good thing you were there. Say no more about it, shall we? Now trot that horse on, whether she likes it or no.”

“Yes, Mother,” Alfie replied, both relieved and contrite.

An hour or so after everyone reached the farmhouse, Jim and Alfie with all the men and boys were still gathered in the garden outside, waiting for news; while as many of the women as could were crowded into the farmhouse kitchen – much to Mary’s irritation, which she did not trouble to hide. They were full of loud advice, which Mary was doing her best to ignore. She simply busied herself getting the child into some dry clothes, rubbing her down, and making her as warm and comfortable as she could in front of the stove. Out in the garden, with Alfie at his side, Jim had recovered enough by now and was busy answering everyone’s questions about how he and Alfie had discovered the girl on St Helen’s. They all wanted to know more, but there was little to tell, and, once he had told it, there was nothing more to say. He could only repeat it. But still the questions came.

Dr Crow finally arrived from St Mary’s, took one look at the crowd of people gathered outside the house, and at once took control. Standing at the farmhouse door, pipe in hand as usual, he declared: “This is not a circus, and I’m not a clown. I’m the doctor and I’ve come to see a patient. Now be off with the lot of you, else I’ll get ugly.”

Unkempt and bedraggled as he always was, a vestige of cabbage left lingering in his beard after his lunch – he wasn’t nicknamed Dr Scarecrow for nothing – Dr Crow was much loved and respected throughout the islands. There was hardly anyone who hadn’t had good cause to be grateful to Dr Crow at some time or another. For years, he had been wise counsellor and kindly comforter to the islanders. He only had to come into a house for everyone to feel at once reassured. But he was also a little feared. No one argued with Dr Crow. Most of the men walked off with hardly a murmur, and the women in the kitchen might have grumbled about it as they left, but they all went in the end. “Here, hold my pipe, lad,” the doctor said to Alfie, as he came into the house, “but don’t you go puffing on it, you hear me. Now where’s the patient?”

Lucy was sitting in Jim’s chair by the stove, swathed in blankets, wide-eyed with alarm and shivering violently.

“She’s called Lucy, Doctor,” Mary told him. “That’s all we know about her, all she said, just her name. I can’t seem to get her warm, Doctor. Tried everything. Can’t stop her shivering.”

The doctor bent down at once, lifted the girl’s feet and put them right up against the stove. “In my experience, Mrs Wheatcroft, we get warm from the feet up,” he said. “We’ll soon have her right. Nasty ankle she’s got. Sprained, by the look of it.”

“I tried to give her some hot milk and honey,” Mary went on, “but she wouldn’t take none.”

“You did well to try, but it’s water she needs most I think, lots of water,” the doctor said, taking his stethoscope out of his bag, and then folding the blankets down from round her neck a little to examine her. The girl at once pulled the blankets up to her chin again, and broke into a sudden fit of coughing that wracked her whole body.

“Easy, girl,” the doctor said. “Lucy, isn’t it? No one’s going to hurt you.” He reached out, more slowly this time, and felt her forehead. He took her wrist and felt her pulse. “Well, she’s got a burning fever on her, that’s for sure,” he said, “and that’s not good. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these cuts on her legs are infected. They’ve been there some time, by the look of them.” He turned to Jim then. “It was you that found her, Mr Wheatcroft, so they tell me. And on St Helen’s, wasn’t it? Horrible place.”

“Alfie and me, Doctor,” Jim replied.

“What was she doing over there?” the doctor went on. “All on her own, was she, when you found her? That right?”

“Think so,” Jim replied. “We didn’t see no one else. But, to be honest, we didn’t have much time to look. Never gave it a thought, not then. I thought about it after though, that she might not have been alone, I mean. So I sent Cousin Dave off in his boat and told him to have a good look around the island, just to be sure. He’ll be back soon. He shouldn’t be long now, I reckon.”

“Out fishing were you, Mr Wheatcroft?”

“Mackerel,” said Jim.

“She’s a good enough size for mackerel,” the doctor went on, smiling for just a moment, “that’s for sure. Catch of the year, I’d say. But it’s a very good thing you found her when you did. This is a very poorly girl, Mrs Wheatcroft, dehydrated, feverish. It doesn’t look to me as if she’s eaten properly in days, weeks maybe. Half starved, she is.”

He was feeling the girl’s neck with both hands, lifting her chin and then peering into her throat. He leaned her forward, tapped her on the back, then put the stethoscope to her chest and listened for a while to her breathing. “A lot of congestion in her lungs, which is not what I like to hear,” he declared. “Weak as a kitten. And that cough of hers is down on her chest, where it shouldn’t be. It’s pneumonia I’m worried about most. You keep her warm, just like you are, Mrs Wheatcroft. Keep those cuts and scratches clean. Warm vegetable broth, hot Bovril, maybe some bread. Not too much at first, mind. A little food and often, that’s the best way. Sweet tea is always good too, if she’ll take it. And, as I said, plenty of water. She’s got to drink. We have to get that fever down, and quickly. I don’t like this shivering, not one bit. We get rid of the shivering, the cough’ll go soon enough too.”

He leaned closer to her. “You be a good girl now, Lucy, eat and drink all you can. You’ve got a second name, have you, girl?” Lucy stared up at him, silently, vacantly. “Not much to say for yourself, eh? Where’d you come from, Lucy? Everyone comes from somewhere.”

“She don’t seem to speak much, Doctor – just her name,” said Mary.

“Came up out of the sea, I heard,” the doctor went on, lifting her eyelids one by one, “like a mermaid, eh? Well I never.” He reached out and lifted up the bottom of the blanket, uncovering her knees. He crossed her legs, then tapped her knees, one after the other. He seemed satisfied. “Don’t you worry, Mrs Wheatcroft, once she’s better, she’ll speak soon enough, and we’ll all know more. She’s in deep shock, in my opinion. But I’m here to tell you that I am quite sure she can’t be a mermaid – because she’s got legs. Scratched they might be, but she’s got two of them. Look!” They all smiled at that. “That’s better. We have to be cheerful around her, you know. It’ll make her feel better; cheerfulness always does. But now comes the question: who’s going to look after her? And what about when she gets better? So far as we can tell, it’s not as if she belongs to anyone, does she?”

Mary did not hesitate. “We will, of course,” she said. “Won’t we, Jimbo? All right with you, Alfie?”

Alfie didn’t say anything. He was hardly listening. He could not take his eyes off the girl. He was so relieved she was alive. He was wondering now who this strange little creature was, how she got herself on to St Helen’s in the first place, and how she had managed to survive over there all on her own.

“She’s got to belong to someone, Mary,” said Jim. “Every child’s got a mother or father somewhere. They’ll be missing her.”

“But who is she?” Alfie asked.

“She’s called Lucy,” said Mary, “and that’s all we need to know for the moment. As I see it, God has brought her to us, up out of the ocean, sent you and Father over to St Helen’s to find her. So we look after her for as long as she needs us. She’ll be one of us, for as long as she has to be, till her mother or father comes to fetch her home. Meanwhile this is her home. You’ll have a sister for a while, Alfie, and your father and me, we’ll have a daughter. Always wanted one of them, didn’t we, Jimbo? Never quite managed it till now, did we? We’ll nurse her back to health, Doctor, feed her up, put some colour in her cheeks.” She brushed away the hair from the girl’s forehead. “And then we’ll see. You’ll be all right with us, dear. Never fear.”

The doctor left soon afterwards, saying he’d be back in a week or so to see how Lucy was getting along, telling Mary very firmly that if the fever got worse she was to send for him at once. He took his pipe back off Alfie before he left. “Horrible habit, my lad,” he said. “Don’t you ever smoke, hear me? Bad for your health. Nasty habit. Else you’ll have the doctor calling round all the time, and you don’t want that, do you?”

He hadn’t been gone more than an hour or two before they had their next visitor. Big Dave Bishop, Cousin Dave, was at the door, and knocking loudly. “Uncle Jim! You in there, Uncle Jim?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He burst in, filling the room with his bulk, his voice loud with excitement. He was cradling an untidy-looking bundle in both arms. “I been over there, Uncle Jim, to St Helen’s, just like you told me,” he said. “No one else there, not so far as I could see. I went all over. Lots of oystercatchers, and gulls, and a seal or two on the rocks. Didn’t find no one else. But I did find this.” It was a blanket, a grey, sodden-looking blanket. And then he unfolded it. “There was this too, Uncle Jim. Just lying there in the corner of the Pest House, it was. S’one of they teddy bears, isn’t it? Hers, isn’t it? Got to be.”

Mary took it from him. Like the blanket, it too was bedraggled and wet through, with a soiled pink ribbon round its neck, and one eye was missing. It was smiling, Alfie noticed.

Suddenly Lucy was sitting upright and reaching out for it. “Yours, is it, Lucy dear?” Mary said. The girl grabbed it from her, clutching it fiercely to herself, as if she’d never let it go.

“Hers all right then,” Jim said. “No doubt about that.”

“And there’s something else an’ all,” Cousin Dave said. “This here blanket, it’s got some funny foreign-like writing on it, like it’s a name sewed on, or something.” He held it up to show them. “I don’t do reading, Uncle Jim. What’s it say?”

Jim spelt the name out loud, then tried to pronounce it. “Wil… helm. Wilhelm. That’s the Kaiser’s name, in’t it? I’m sure it is. Sounds like William. Kaiser Bill – he’s called that, isn’t he?”

“The Kaiser!” said Cousin Dave. “Then it’s German, isn’t it? Got to be. And if it’s German then that’s where that girl comes from then, isn’t it? Stands to reason, don’t it? She’s one of them. She’s a lousy Hun. Could be the Kaiser’s ruddy daughter.”

“Don’t talk soft, Cousin David,” Mary said, pulling the blanket away from him. “And I don’t care who she is, whether she comes from Timbuktu. We’re all God’s children, wherever we come from, whatever we’re called, whichever language we speak. And don’t you never forget it.”

She walked right up to him then, and, looking him right in the eye, she spoke very softly. “You listen to me, Cousin David. I don’t want you never saying anything about the name on this blanket. You hear me? Not a word. You know what it’s like these days, with all this tittle-tattle about German spies, and all that. Nothing but poisonous nonsense. This gets around, and people will start talking. Not a word. We keep it in the family, right? You promise, promise me faithfully now.”

Cousin Dave looked away, first at Jim then at Alfie, hoping for some help. He was clearly nervous. He didn’t seem to know quite where to look, nor what to say. Mary reached up and took his face firmly in her hands, forcing him to look at her. “Promise me? Faithfully?” she said again.

It took Cousin Dave a while to reply. “All right, Aunty Mary,” he said at last. “I shan’t say nothing about it. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

But Jim didn’t trust him. Everyone knew that after a drink or two Big Dave Bishop would say almost anything. “We won’t say a word, will we, Cousin David?” said Jim, and with just enough menace in his tone that Cousin Dave would understand that he really meant it. “You went over to St Helen’s and you found the teddy bear, and you found the blanket, just an ordinary grey blanket. That’s all you say, like your Aunty Mary told you. And you don’t want to upset your Aunty Mary, do you? Cos if she’s upset, then I’m upset. And I get nasty when I’m upset, don’t I? And you don’t want that, right?”

“S’pose,” Cousin Dave replied, shamefaced.