Michael Morpurgo - Listen to the Moon

But he didn’t know Lucy like he knew his Uncle Billy. He was talking to a face, someone from nowhere. He wanted to get to know her. He longed for her to talk back, to tell him about herself, who she was and where she had come from. So on he’d go, day after day, telling her his stories: about the porpoises he’d seen swimming out in the Tresco Channel, about Uncle Billy and how he was getting on with his work on the Hispaniola , what fish his father had caught, about another merchantman sunk out in the Western Approaches by a German submarine, how there’d been no survivors.

Whatever he told her though, however he told it, no matter how animated, inventive and expansive he became in the telling, her face remained quite expressionless. But what was so frustrating and disconcerting for Alfie was that he was sure that from time to time she was in fact listening, that she was understanding something of what he was telling her. He had the feeling too – and this always encouraged him to go on – that she liked him to be there with her, liked listening to his stories. Even so, she simply would not or could not show it, would not or could not respond.

Then, out of nowhere, there came a quite unexpected breakthrough. It happened on the afternoon after yet another fight with Zeb at school. Alfie found Dr Crow in the house when he got back, talking earnestly with his mother and father round the kitchen table. Alfie sensed he was interrupting something the moment he walked in. When his mother asked him to take Lucy up her milk and cake, and sit with her for a while, he knew there were things they’d prefer to talk about without him there. He didn’t mind anyway. He wanted to see Lucy. He had plenty he wanted to tell her.

He found her sitting up in bed, looking out of the window and humming softly to herself. It wasn’t the first time she had been humming when he walked in. It was always the same tune – he had noticed that. She looked a little brighter than usual, still unsmiling, but it occurred to Alfie that she had sat up in bed because she had heard him coming, that she might even have been looking forward to it. He could see she had noticed his split lip, and had a sudden hope that she might ask him about it. She didn’t, but she did stare at it. And, better still, she did reach out and touch it.

Alfie could hear the doctor talking downstairs with his mother and father. He was tempted to try to listen to what they were saying, but the words were a mumble, too indistinct to hear properly. And besides, he had things he needed to tell Lucy. Lucy ate her cake slowly – she always ate slowly – nibbling at it, while Alfie gave her a blow by blow account of his fight with Zebediah Bishop, and of the punishment he’d been given too, showed her his bruised knuckles, told her all about Beastly Beagley and his ruler, showed how he held your arm in a vice-like grip and hit you on the knuckles with the edge of the ruler so hard you couldn’t move your fingers afterwards at all. He told her how Zeb had again threatened to tell everyone about Lucy’s blanket with Wilhelm on it, but how he wouldn’t dare because Alfie knew about Zeb and his cronies robbing the money box in the church, and how he had threatened he would tell the Reverend Morrison if Zeb ever mentioned a word about the name on the blanket.

It was at that moment that Lucy responded for the first time to anything he had ever said to her. She looked up at him for a moment, and then lifted a corner of the blanket to show him. The word came out slowly, and only with great concentration and effort. “W… Wil… helm,” she said softly, and said no more.

But she had spoken! Lucy had spoken! It was indistinct, but it was a spoken word, a recognisable word, definitely a word.

Alfie had to tell someone, anyone, at once. He ran downstairs and burst into the kitchen. “Lucy spoke!” he said. “She said something. She did! I’m sure she did.”

“You see, Doctor? Did you hear that? She is getting better, she is!” Mary said, and she reached out to grasp Alfie’s hands. “That’s wonderful, wonderful, Alfie. What did she say?”

‘Wilhelm’ was on the tip of his tongue. Then he thought again. No , he thought, no one must know, not even the doctor . He had so nearly blurted it out. Trying to gather his thoughts, he said, “I’m… I’m not sure. Couldn’t really tell, but it was a word, promise, a real word. It was!”

The doctor smiled up at him, prodding the tobacco deep into his pipe with his thumb. “It doesn’t matter what it was,” he said. “She was trying to speak, that is what is important. You have done well, Alfie, very well indeed. But in spite of this – and it is good news, Alfie, very good news – as I have been telling your mother and father, I do still have grave concerns about Lucy’s future. I have examined her again this afternoon, and I have to say there is a great deal I do not properly understand. I should have expected her to have recovered much more quickly by now than she has. Her health and strength are much restored – her ankle is now as good as the other one – thanks in large part to how well your mother has cared for her. But it is not only Lucy’s inability to speak properly that worries me, it is also her reluctance to get up out of bed. And this is not just physical. There is something else wrong here, something in her mind.”

“In her mind?” Alfie asked. “What do you mean, in her mind?”

The doctor sighed. He lit up his pipe and sat back. “Listen,” he went on. “This is how I see it. Only a few weeks ago – what is it now, eight or nine weeks, is it, Mr Wheatcroft? – you found that poor child half dead from cold and starvation on St Helen’s. A couple more days out there on her own, and I’m telling you she would not have survived. You found her just in time. And you’ve all done wonders with her, brought her back from the brink. She’s eating better now, that terrible cough of hers is all but gone, and she’s stronger now every time I see her. She is in no danger any more. She will survive, of that I have no doubt – in her body at any rate. But as for her mind, as I say, there I do have some concerns. It is a good sign that she spoke, Alfie, very good. Yet, all the same, I do worry for her sanity. And I do have to say that, in this regard, I have seen very little improvement up till now.”

He paused, puffing long on his pipe before beginning again. “To me, she seems lost, lost deep inside herself, as lost as she was on that island. The child has clearly been traumatised, in shock, you understand. How this has happened or why, we do not know, for she cannot tell us. She can hear – I have established that. But, for one reason or another, she cannot or will not speak. What is it? Two words in nearly two months now – that is hardly speaking. Maybe she has always been like this from birth, we simply do not know. The mind is as fragile as the body, and, sadly, we know far less about it. But what I do know is this, and am quite sure of it – I have observed this often among the wounded sailors and soldiers I have treated – that the body can help cure the mind. Body and mind work best together. The first step, and I am convinced of this, is to persuade her to get out of her bed. We have to get her moving, to take an interest in life again. It is the only way.”

“I told you, I’ve tried. She won’t be moved, Doctor,” said Mary. “I’ve tried everything I know. She just lies there. I don’t know what else I can do.”

“Believe me, I understand, Mrs Wheatcroft, I do,” the doctor went on. “No one could have done more. But that’s my point. I’m afraid that sooner or later, if she does not improve, she may need more… well, let us call it specialised help. And that she can only get in a hospital on the mainland.”