Книга - Listen to the Moon

Listen to the Moon
Michael Morpurgo


The stunning novel set during World War One from Michael Morpurgo, the nation’s favourite storyteller and multi-million copy bestseller.May, 1915.Alfie and his fisherman father find a girl on an uninhabited island in the Scillies – injured, thirsty, lost… and with absolutely no memory of who she is, or how she came to be there. She can say only one word: Lucy.Where has she come from? Is she a mermaid, the victim of a German U-boat, or even – as some islanders suggest – a German spy…?Only one thing is for sure: she loves music and moonlight, and it is when she listens to the gramophone that the glimmers of the girl she once was begin to appear.WW1 is raging, suspicion and fear are growing, and Alfie and Lucy are ever more under threat. But as we begin to see the story of Merry, a girl boarding a great ship for a perilous journey across the ocean, another melody enters the great symphony – and the music begins to resolve…A beautiful tour de force of family, love, war and forgiveness, this is a major new novel from the author of PRIVATE PEACEFUL – in which what was once lost may sometimes be found, washed up again on the shore…























Copyright (#ulink_bac24da7-a3a0-571d-bda6-1c74adebbc7e)


First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2014

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.michaelmorpurgo.com (http://www.michaelmorpurgo.com) for news, videos, competitions, author interviews and more

Copyright © Michael Morpurgo 2014

Michael Morpurgo asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007339631, TPB ISBN 9780007339648

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780008104856

Version: 2014-09-18


For Philip and Jude








Contents

Cover (#u85519fd9-9944-57e8-ae33-ea4850e3fa2f)

Title Page (#u5dee41ff-4012-5b0c-9925-4a8dc12867c2)

Copyright (#u3833cfb9-2d9d-563c-ac82-bf0a808ad10c)

Dedication (#uc35d1894-79ae-562f-9f39-c4a0c710521c)

Map (#u0fb7b101-7e5b-54cc-b097-51e5b6a2e75d)

To Begin (#u7c96b9e3-ed07-568b-a842-78d72e6f96c7)

Chapter One (#u7604a7ab-82c4-55f5-bc8a-2a9179a657e0)

Chapter Two (#u1d7afb29-c8fc-53dd-a85c-7dc0315c6dfa)

Chapter Three (#u069413aa-d6af-53ad-85e3-e91069c81c8c)

Chapter Four (#ub251b584-23d3-5ed7-aa75-f4fb7d77e9a7)

Chapter Five (#u611c2380-5f24-59a6-83ae-008095cca691)

Chapter Six (#u299532f9-21cc-511e-9730-1a2fd6d423be)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-one (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-eight (#litres_trial_promo)

To End (#litres_trial_promo)

Read on (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)







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WE ALL COME FROM SOMEWHERE. But, in a way, I come from nowhere. Let me explain. My grandma simply came up out of the sea a long time ago, like a mermaid, except that she had two legs instead of a fish tail. She seemed to be about twelve years old at the time, but no one could tell; and that was because there was no clue as to who she was, nor where she came from. She was half starved, mad with fever and could speak only one word: “Lucy”.

This is her story, as I later heard it told to me, by those who knew her best, by my grandpa, by other relations and friends, and, most importantly, by herself. Over the years I have pieced it all together as well as I could, using only the evidence of those who saw it with their own eyes, those who were there.

I want to thank the Museum of the Isles of Scilly for its help, for access to school logbooks and other sources, and especially the family of the late Dr Crow MD of St Mary’s, for allowing me to quote from his journal. My family, and many others also, too numerous to mention – on the Scilly islands, in New York and elsewhere – have helped me greatly and patiently in my research, in piecing everything together.

You could say this story has been a lifelong fascination for me, an obsession almost. I have certainly been working on it, on and off, for most of my life. I simply could not get it out of my head, which in a way, I suppose, is not surprising. It is my grandma’s story – much of it told, as you will discover, in her own words, as she dictated it to me. So, in that sense, it is my story too, my family’s story.

Grandma made us who we are – with a little help from Grandpa, it should be said. I am who I am because of her, because of him. I have done what I’ve done, been who I’ve been, lived where I’ve lived, written what I’ve written, because of them. So I have written it for them, and also because it happens to be the most unlikely and unbelievable story I have ever heard.







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IT WAS MACKEREL THEY WERE looking for that day, because it was Friday. Mary always liked to cook mackerel for their supper on Fridays, but Alfie and Jim, his father, both knew she wouldn’t do it, and they wouldn’t have it, unless they brought her back enough mackerel to make a proper meal for all four of them. Alfie and his father had prodigious appetites, which his mother loved both to grumble about and to satisfy.

“I swear the two of you got hollow legs,” Mary would say in open admiration, as she watched them wolfing down their mackerel yet again – three of them each she liked to put on their plates, if the catch had been good enough.

There was Uncle Billy to feed too. He lived in the boat shed on Green Bay on his own, because he liked it that way. It was just across the field from Veronica Farmhouse, where they lived, a stone’s throw away. Mary would bring him his supper every evening, but, unlike Alfie, he would as like as not complain if it was mackerel again. “I like crab,” he’d say. But then if Mary brought him crab it was, “Where’s my mackerel?”

He could be contrary, could Uncle Billy. But then Uncle Billy was contrary in many ways. He was different from other people, different from anyone. As Mary often said, that was what made him special.

The fish were hard to find that morning. It helped keep spirits up in the boat to talk about supper, to think about it, about how Mary would cook the mackerel for them that evening: dipped in egg, rolled in oats, then seasoned with salt and pepper. She fried it always in butter. The smell of it would be wafting through the farmhouse and they’d be sitting down at the kitchen table, ready and waiting, mouths watering, savouring the sound and smell of the fish sizzling in the pan.

“Course, after she finds out what you and me have gone and done, Alfie,” Jim said, straining hard at the oars, “we could be on bread and water for a week. She will not be a happy woman, son, not happy at all. She’ll have my guts for garters, yours too.”

“We should go in closer to St Helen’s, Father,” Alfie said, his mind on the mackerel, not his mother’s retribution. “There’s fish there almost always, just off the beach. Caught half a dozen last time we were there, didn’t we?”

“Don’t like going near the place,” Jim said. “Never have. But maybe you’re right, maybe we should give it a go. Wish the wind would get up, and we could do a bit of sailing. All this rowing’s half killing me. Here, Alfie. Your turn.” They changed places.

As Alfie took up the oars, he found himself thinking of supper again, of the sound and the smell of frying mackerel, and then of how hard it was to remember smells and describe them, how sounds and sights were much easier to recall somehow. Once the mackerel was on the plate in front of them, they always had to wait until grace was said. Father and he were inclined to say grace rather too hurriedly for his mother’s liking. She took her time over it. For her, grace was a meant prayer, and different each mealtime, not simply a ritual to be rushed through. She would have liked a proper and respectful pause after the Amen, but Alfie and his father would be at their mackerel at once, like gannets. There would be strong, sweet tea and freshly baked bread to go with it, and bread-and-butter pudding, if they were lucky. It was always the feast of the week.

It was already late afternoon and Jim was very aware that they had precious little to show for nearly an entire day’s fishing. Now that he wasn’t rowing, the wind was already chilling him to the bone. He pulled his collar up. It was cold for May, more like March, Jim thought. He looked at his son bending rhythmically, easily, to the oars, and envied him his strength and suppleness, but at the same time took a father’s pride in it too. He had been that young once, that strong.

He looked down at his hands, scarred, calloused and cracked as they were now, ingrained with years of fishing and years of farming his potatoes and his flowers. He baited the line again, his fingers working instinctively, automatically. He was thankful he could not feel them. They were numb to the cold and salt of seawater, numb to the wind. Some of those old cracks in his finger joints had opened up again and would otherwise be paining him dreadfully by now. It was good to be numb, he thought, and just as well. He was wondering why it was that his ears hurt, why they too hadn’t gone numb? He wished they would.

Jim smiled inside himself as he remembered how the day had begun, at breakfast. It had been Alfie’s idea in the first place. He didn’t want to go to school. He wanted to come fishing instead. He’d tried this on before, often, and rarely with any success. It didn’t stop him trying again. “Tell Mother you need me,” Alfie had said, “that you can’t do without me. She’ll listen to you. I won’t be no trouble, Father. Promise.”

Jim knew he wouldn’t be any trouble. The boy sailed a boat well, rowed strongly, knew the waters and fished with a will, with that wholehearted enthusiasm and confidence borne of youth, always so sure he would catch something. The fish seemed to like him too. It was noticeable that Jim often did better when Alfie was in the boat. With the fishing as disappointing as it had been recently in the waters around Scilly, Jim would go out fishing these days more in hope than expectation. Catches had been poor for all the fishermen in recent times, not just him. Anyway, Alfie would be company out there, good company. So he agreed to do what he could to persuade Mary to let Alfie miss school for a day, and come fishing with him.

But all pleading, all reasoning, proved to be quite useless, as Jim had warned Alfie it might be. Mary was adamant that Alfie had to go to school, that he’d missed far too much already, that he was always trying to find ways of not going. Any excuse would do: working out on the farm, or going fishing with his father. Enough was enough. When Mary insisted with that certain tone in her voice, Jim knew there was very little point in arguing, that she was immovable. He persisted only because he wanted Alfie to know he really wanted him out there in the boat with him, and to demonstrate his solidarity. When Alfie saw the argument wasn’t going his way, he joined in, trying anything he could think of that might change her mind.

“What does one day off school matter, Mother, one day?”

“We always catch more fish when there’s the two of us.”

“And anyway, out in an open boat it’s always safer with two – I heard you say so.”

“And I hate Beastly Beagley at school. Everyone knows he can’t teach for toffee. He’s a waste of space, and school’s nothing but a waste of time.”

“You let me stay home, Mother, and, after I’ve been fishing with Father, I’ll come back and clean out the henhouse for you, and fetch back a cartload of seaweed to fertilise the lower field, whatever you want.”

“What I want, Alfie, is for you to go to school,” Mary said firmly. It was quite futile. She wasn’t going to give in. There was nothing more to be said, nothing more to be done. So Alfie had trudged off reluctantly to school with Mary’s words ringing in his ears. “There’s more to life than boats and fishing, Alfie! Never heard of a fish teaching anyone to read or write! And your writing ain’t nothing to write home about neither, if you ask me!”

When he’d gone, she’d turned to Jim. “I’ll need nine good mackerel for tea, Jimbo, don’t forget,” she said. “And wrap up warm. Spring it may be, but there was a keen wind out there when I went to feed the hens. That boy of yours forgot to do it again.”

“He’s always my boy when he forgets,” said Jim, shrugging on his coat, and stepping into his boots.

“Where else do you think he gets it from?” she replied, buttoning up Jim’s coat. She gave him his peck on the cheek and patted his shoulders as she always did, as he always liked her to do. “And by the way, Jimbo, I promised Uncle Billy a crab for tomorrow – you know how much he loves his crab. Nice one, mind. Not too big. Not too small. He don’t like a crab all chewy and tough. He’s very particular. Don’t forget.”

“I won’t forget,” Jim muttered under his breath as he went out of the door. “Nothing’s good enough for big brother Billy, eh? You spoil that old pirate rotten, that’s the truth of it.”

“No more’n I spoil you, Jim Wheatcroft,” she retorted.

“Anyway,” Jim went on, “I’d have thought old and tough and chewy would have suited an old pirate like Long John Silver just perfect.”

When it came to Uncle Billy, it was always this kind of good-natured banter between them. They had sometimes to share the humorous side of it. The truth of what had happened to Uncle Billy in his life was often too painful.

“Jim Wheatcroft!” she called after him. “That’s my brother you’re talking about, and don’t you forget it. He ain’t neither old nor chewy, just in a world of his own. He’s not like the rest of us, and that’s fine by me.”

“Whatever you say, Marymoo, whatever you say,” he replied, and, with a cheery flourish of his cap, went off down the field towards Green Bay, mimicking Uncle Billy’s favourite ditty just loudly enough for her to hear: “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!”

“Jim Wheatcroft, I heard that!” In response, Jim gave her another wave of his cap. “And you take care out there, Jimbo, you hear!” she shouted after him.

As he went down to the boat, Jim was marvelling at Mary’s endless patience and constant devotion to her brother, but at the same time he felt more than a little vexed, as he always did, at how oblivious Uncle Billy seemed to be to all Mary had done for him, and was doing for him every day of her life. He could hear him now, singing away out on his boat in Green Bay, “the good ship Hispaniola”, as Uncle Billy called it.

It hadn’t been a ‘good ship’ at all, not to start with, just the remnants, the rotting hulk, of an old Cornish lugger, abandoned long ago on the beach on Green Bay. It was five years now since Mary had brought Uncle Billy home from the hospital and installed him in the boat shed. She had made a home for him up in the sail loft, and he’d been out there on Green Bay, just about every day since, whatever the weather, restoring that old lugger. It was she who had told him about the ship in the hospital, and, as soon as she got him home, encouraged him to get back to boatbuilding, which he’d loved so much as a young man. She was convinced that what he needed above all, she’d told Jim, was to keep busy, use his hands, be the craftsman he once was again.

Everyone, including Jim, had thought it was an impossible task, that out there in all weathers the lugger had deteriorated too much, was too far gone, and that anyway ‘Silly Billy’, as they called him all over the island, couldn’t possibly do it. Only Mary insisted he could. And soon enough everyone could see that she had been right. When it came to boatbuilding, Silly Billy – whatever you thought of him – knew well enough what he was doing. Day by day over the years, the old lugger in Green Bay was becoming young again, and sleek and beautiful.

She lay there at anchor as Jim walked to the fishing boat that morning, resplendent in green paint, ‘Hispaniola’ painted black on her side. She may not yet be finished, but the fine and elegant lines of her hull were evident now to anyone walking along Green Bay. And now with the main mast up, that Uncle Billy had raised only a few weeks before, she was looking almost complete. With no help from anyone – Uncle Billy liked to be on his own, work on his own – he had brought her back to life. Uncle Billy may be odd – that was the general view; a bit “mazed in the head”, they usually called him – but with the work he had done on that old lugger over the years, plain now for everyone to see, he had gained the respect of the whole island. He was still ‘Silly Billy’ though, because they all knew where he’d been, where he’d come from, because of how he was.

Walking across the sand on Green Bay, Jim could see Uncle Billy up on deck. He was running the black and white skull and crossbones flag up the mast, as he always had done every morning since the mast had gone up. He had on the Long John Silver hat that Mary had made for him, and he was singing. Uncle Billy had his ups and downs, his good days and his bad days. This morning he had the hat on and he was singing, so this must be a good day, which, Jim knew, would make life much easier for Mary. Uncle Billy could be a cantankerous old goat when he was in one of his black moods. And for some reason Jim had never understood, when he was like that, he was always nastier to Mary than anyone. Yet she was the one who had saved him, brought him home, and the person he loved most in the world.

It was because Jim was so busy admiring the Hispaniola, so preoccupied thinking about Uncle Billy, that he had not noticed until now that Alfie was out there, clambering about on Penguin, the family’s fishing boat, making her ready. He was untying her from the buoy, then rowing her in towards him over the shallows.

“What d’you think you’re up to, Alfie?” Jim protested, looking over his shoulder nervously. “If your mother sees you—”

“I know, Father, she’ll have my guts for garters – whatever that means,” Alfie said, with a smile and a shrug. “I missed the school boat. Real shame. You were there, you saw it go without me. Right, Father?”

Jim was unable to conceal his delight. “You are a very wicked boy, Alfie Wheatcroft,” he said, climbing into the boat. “Don’t know where you get it from. We’d better come back with plenty of good fish then, hadn’t we? Or my life, and yours, won’t be worth living.”

Out at sea, an hour or so later, they were fishing off Foreman’s Island. It had been a hard row for Alfie against the current all the way along Pentle Bay, and Jim could see he needed a rest. He took the oars from him and rowed over to check his lobster pots. Between them, they hauled up three good-sized crabs from the pots off Foreman’s Island – so, a crab for Uncle Billy, and two to sell – and there was a squid in one of the pots, which would do nicely for bait. And Alfie managed to catch a couple of pollock as well.

“Good for fishcakes,” Jim grumbled, “and not much else. Your mother don’t like pollock. We can’t come home with nothing but pollock. We got to find some mackerel.”

“St Helen’s,” Alfie said, reaching for the oars, and starting to row again. “They’ll be there, dozens of them, Father, waiting for us, you’ll see.”

It was a flat calm now, hardly a ripple on the sea, and the tide took them quickly towards St Helen’s. Wary of rocks, they came in with great care, Alfie rowing gently towards the shore, towards the only sandy beach on the island. Jim dropped anchor. This was where they had caught their mackerel, only a few weeks before, a dozen or more, and big fish too, all of them inside a few minutes. Maybe they’d get lucky again.

Both of them knew they would have to get lucky. Mackerel were like that. You could be out fishing all day right above them, and the line would come up empty every time. Or they’d be down there, begging to be caught, it seemed, and then they’d jump right on to your hooks and come up shining and silver and wriggling on the line. Jim remembered how delighted Mary had been with them before, when they came home with their great catch, and showed her, how she’d given them both the best of hugs, and told them there weren’t two other fishermen in the world like them.

Jim dropped his line into the sea. “Come on, fish,” he said. “Have a little nibble, have a little bite. Be good fish, be nice fish, and then Marymoo will give us more hugs, and tonight we’ll have the best supper of our lives. Come on, fish. What are you waiting for? I’m not going away till I get you, lots of you.”

“They’re down there,” said Alfie, peering into the water on the other side of the boat. “I can see them. Bet I catch one before you do, Father.”

It was a long while later that Alfie first heard it. Neither had caught a fish, nor even felt a suggestion of a bite. Both were silent, and deep in concentration. Alfie was sitting there, hunched over the line, gazing intently down into the clear blue-green of the sea below, the fronds of weed waving mockingly up at him. That was when he heard something calling. The sound seemed at once strange to him, out of place somehow, not right. Alfie looked up from his fishing. It came from the island, a hundred yards or so away, from somewhere near the shore, a soft cry, a whimpering. A seal pup perhaps. But it was more human than that.







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“YOU HEAR THAT, FATHER?” Alfie said. “Just gulls, Alfie,” Jim replied. And, sure enough, there was a young seagull on the beach, scurrying along after its mother, neck outstretched, mewing, begging to be fed. But Alfie realised soon enough that wasn’t at all the sound that he had heard. He knew gulls better than any other bird, but he had never before heard a young gull cry like that. The crying he had heard was different, not like a bird at all, not like a seal pup either. It was true that gulls were known to be good mimics – not as good as crows, but good enough. Alfie was perplexed, and distracted now entirely from his fishing. The two gulls, mother and fledgling, lifted off the beach and flew away, the young bird still pestering to be fed, leaving the beach deserted behind them, but not silent. There it was again, the same sound.

“Not gulls, Father. Can’t be,” he said. “Something else. Listen!”

It came from somewhere beyond the shoreline altogether, from the direction of the old Pest House, or from the great rock in the middle of the island. Alfie was quite sure by now that no gull, however clever a mimic, could possibly cry like that. And then it came to him. A child! A child cries like that! Gulls didn’t cough, and Alfie could hear quite clearly now the sound of coughing.

“There’s someone there, Father!” he whispered. “On the island.”

“I hear it,” Jim said. “I hear it all right, but it don’t seem hardly possible. Can’t see no one there, nothing but gulls. There’s hundreds of them, and all watching us. Like I told you, Alfie, I don’t like this place, never did.” He paused to listen again. “Can’t hear nothing now. Ears playing tricks on us, that’s what it was. Got to be. Can’t be no one there anyway. I didn’t see no boat anchored off shore as we came in, and there’s nowhere else you can land on St Helen’s, except right here on this beach. This is an uninhabited island, deserted. No one’s lived here for years, for centuries.”

As Jim scanned the island for any sign of life – footprints on the sand, the telltale smoke of a fire perhaps – all the stories about St Helen’s came back to him. He remembered landing there before, a few times. He had walked the length and breadth of it. It was no more than half a mile from end to end, a few hundred yards across the middle, an island of bracken and brambles and heather, a shoreline of great grey boulders and pebbles, with that one spit of steep, shelving sand, and the great rock he remembered so well rearing up behind the Pest House. The Pest House itself had long since fallen into ruin, roof and windows gaping, walls crumbling. But the chimney was still standing.

Jim had gone there first as a small boy, with his father, collecting driftwood for the fire, piling it up on the beach to bring home, or scouring the beach for cowrie shells, ‘guinea money’ as they called it. He’d climbed the rock once with his father, dared himself then to climb it again on his own, got to the top, but had been scolded for it by his father, and told never to do it again without him.

Jim had never really liked the place even as a small boy, had never felt at ease there. St Helen’s had seemed to him even then an abandoned place, a place of lost souls, of ghosts. There was something dark and sad about the island, and he’d thought that long before he’d ever been told the stories. Over the years he had learnt about its grim history bit by bit, how once long ago it had been a holy island, where monks, seeking solitary, contemplative lives, had lived out their years. The ruins of their chapel were still there. And there was, he knew, a holy well just beyond the Pest House – his mother had told him that much. He’d gone looking for it once with her in among the bracken and the brambles, but they had never found it.

But it was the story of the Pest House itself, why it had been built, and how it had been used, that had always troubled him most – so much so that he had never told Alfie about it. There are some stories, he thought, too terrible to pass on. In years gone by, in the days of the great sailing ships, St Helen’s had once been a quarantine island. To prevent the spread of disease, any sailor or passenger on board, who had fallen sick, with yellow fever or typhoid, or some other infectious illness, was put off on St Helen’s, to recover if they could, but much more likely to live out their last wretched days in the Pest House. The sick and dying had simply been left there in isolation, abandoned, and with little hope of survival. All his life Jim had been horrified at the thought of it. Ever since he’d been told about that Pest House, he had thought of St Helen’s as a shameful place, an island of suffering and death, to be avoided if at all possible.

Quite definitely now, and there could no longer be any doubt about it, Jim was hearing the sound of a child crying. Alfie was sure of it too. Neither said a word. The same unspoken thought occurred to both of them then. They had heard tales of ghosts living on St Helen’s – everyone had. Scilly was full of ghost stories. There were the ghosts on Samson Island, the ghost of King Arthur out on the Eastern Isles, and everywhere, all over the islands, there were stories of the spirits of stranded sailors, pirates, drowned sailors. Stories, they told themselves, just stories.

Coughing interrupted the whimpering. This was no ghost. There was someone on the island, a child, a child wailing, whimpering, and still coughing too. It was a cry for help they could not ignore. As they hauled in their lines, in a great hurry now, Alfie found there were three mackerel dangling on his hooks. He hadn’t even felt they were there. But the fish didn’t matter any more. Jim pulled up the anchor, and Alfie rowed hard for the shore. A few strong pulls and they felt the boat beaching. They leapt over the side into the shallows and hauled the boat up higher on to the sand.

Standing on the beach, they listened once again for the sound of the child. For some reason, they found themselves talking in whispers. All they could hear was the sea lapping softly behind them and the piping of a pair of oystercatchers that were flying off low and fast, their wingtips skimming the sea.

“Can’t hear nothing, can you?” Jim said. “Can’t see nothing neither.” He was beginning to wonder now if he had imagined the whole thing, if his hearing had deceived him. But the real truth, and Jim knew it, was that he did not want to venture any further. At that moment he was all for getting the boat back into the water, and rowing home. But Alfie was already running up the beach towards the dunes. Jim thought of calling him back, but he didn’t want to shout. He couldn’t let his son go on alone. He took off his jacket and laid it over his catch in the bottom of the boat, to hide their fish from any sharp-eyed, marauding gulls, and then, reluctantly, followed where Alfie had gone, up over the dunes, towards the Pest House.

A chill came over Alfie as he stood on top of the dunes, looking up at the Pest House, and he knew it wasn’t only the cold. Gulls, hundreds of them, the island’s silent sentinels, were watching him from rocks everywhere, from the walls of the Pest House, from the chimney, from the sky above. After a while, Jim was at his side, and breathless.

Alfie called out. “Anyone here?” There came no answer.

“Who’s there?”

Nothing.

A pair of gulls dived on them then, screeching and wheeling away, first one then another. The rest glared at them darkly. The message was unmistakable. You are not welcome here. Get off our island.

“There’s no one here, Alfie,” Jim whispered. “Let’s go home.”

“But we heard someone, Father,” Alfie said. “I know we did.”

Becoming more fearful now with every passing moment, it was Jim who called out this time. His whole instinct was to turn away, get to the boat fast and go from this place at once. But at the same time he needed to persuade himself that there was no child on the island, that Alfie was wrong, that they must have been imagining the whole thing. They both called out now, echoing one another.

Closer, and quite unmistakable, came the same whimpering as before, but more muffled, stifled. There could be no doubt about it. It was the voice of a child, a child who was terrified, and it was coming from inside the Pest House.

Jim’s first thought was that it had to be some local child who had gone out fishing maybe and had some sort of accident, lost an oar perhaps, or fallen overboard. It wasn’t so long ago, after all, that he had rescued a young lad from the water after the boy had got into trouble out in a boat in Tresco Channel. He’d tripped and gone overboard, and was being swept out to sea by the current. This one had been washed up on St Helen’s – there was no other explanation he could think of. But if any child had been missing then surely he’d have heard about it. The alarm would have been raised all over the islands. Everyone would have been out looking. He couldn’t understand it.

Alfie had already gone on ahead of him up the track towards the Pest House, calling out to whoever was in there, softly, as reassuringly as he could. “Hello. S’only me. Alfie, Alfie Wheatcroft. I got my father with me. You all right, are you?” There was no reply. Both of them stopped outside the doorway, uncertain now as to what to say or do.

“We’re from Bryher,” Jim went on. “You know us, don’t you? I’m Alfie’s father. What you doing over here? Tipped yourself out of a boat, did you? Easily done. Easily done. You must be half frozed. We’ll have you out of here in a jiffy, get you back home, cup of nice warm tea, tatty cake, and a hot bath. That’ll shiver the cold out of you, won’t it?”

As Alfie stepped tentatively through the doorway into the ruins of the Pest House, the whimpering stopped. There was no sign of anyone inside, nothing but bracken and brambles. At the far end of the building, in under the chimney, there was a fireplace, covered in dried bracken, a thick carpet of it, almost as if someone had been making a bed.

A sudden bird flew up out of a niche in the wall, an explosion of fluttering that set Alfie’s heart pounding. He pushed his way through the thick undergrowth that had long since made the ruins their own, brambles tearing at his shirt and trousers as he passed. Jim held back at the doorway. “No one here, Alfie,” he whispered. “You can see there isn’t.”

But Alfie was pointing into the corner of the fireplace, and waving his hand at his father to be quiet.

“Don’t you worry none,” Alfie said, treading softly as he went, and slowly. “We’ll have you out of here and home before you know it. We got our boat. Won’t hurt you none, promise. S’all right, honest. You can come out now.”

He had seen a face, a bone-white face, peering through the bracken, a child, a girl, hollow-cheeked, and with dark lank hair down to her shoulders. She was cowering there in the corner of the building, her fist in her mouth, her eyes staring up at him, wide with terror. She had a grey blanket round her shoulders. Her face was tear-stained, and she was shaking uncontrollably.

Alfie crouched down where he was, keeping his distance – he did not want to alarm her. He did not recognise her. If she had been from the islands, he would have known her for certain – he knew all the children on Scilly, everyone did, whichever island they came from. “Hello?” he said. “You got a name then, have you?” She shrank from him, breathing hard, coughing again now, and shivering under her blanket. “I’m Alfie. You needn’t be afeared of me, girl.” She was staring at Jim now, breathing hard. “That’s Father. He won’t hurt you any more’n I will. You hungry, are you? You been here long? You got a terrible cough on you. Where d’you come from then? How d’you get here, girl?” She said nothing, simply crouched there, frozen in her fear, her eyes darting wildly from Jim to Alfie, from Alfie to Jim. Alfie reached out slowly, and touched her blanket. “It’s wet through,” he said.

Her bare feet were covered in sand and mud, and what little he could see of her dress was nothing but tatters and rags. There were empty limpet shells scattered all about her feet, and a few broken eggshells, gulls’ eggs they were. “We got mackerel for tea back home,” he went on. “Mother does it beautiful, rolled in egg and oats, and we got bread-and-butter pudding for afters too. You’ll like it. We got our boat down on the beach. You want to come with us?” He inched his way towards her, holding out his hand. “Can you walk, girl?”

She sprang up then like a frightened fawn, leapt past him and was stumbling through the bracken towards the doorway. She must have tripped because she suddenly disappeared into the undergrowth. Jim found her moments later, lying face down, unconscious. He turned her over. She was bleeding profusely from her forehead. He leaned over her. There were scratches and cuts all over her legs. One ankle was swollen and bruised. She wasn’t breathing. Alfie was there on his knees beside her.

“Is she dead, Father?” he breathed. “Is she dead?” Jim felt her neck. He could feel no pulse. With panic rising in his chest, he remembered then how Alfie had fallen once down on to rocks when he was little, how he’d run all the way home with Alfie in his arms, quite sure he must be dead. He remembered how calm Mary had been, how she had taken charge at once, laid Alfie out on the kitchen table, put her ear to his mouth and felt his breath on her skin. He did the same now, put his ear to the girl’s mouth, felt the warm breath, and knew there was life in her yet. He had to get her home fast. Mary would know what to do with her.

“You get to the boat, Alfie,” he said. “Quick. I’ll bring her.”

He picked her up, and ran out of the Pest House, along the path to the dunes. She was light and limp and damp in his arms. He could feel she was little more than skin and bones. By the time he got there, Alfie had the boat in the water. He was standing in the shallows, holding it. “You get in, son,” Jim said. “You look after her. I’ll row.” They wrapped her in Jim’s coat, and laid her down with her head on Alfie’s lap. “Hold her close,” Jim told him. “We got to keep her warm as best we can.” He pushed off then, leaping into the boat, and gathering the oars almost in one movement.

Jim rowed like a man possessed out into the swell of the open ocean past the lighthouse on Round Island, and at long last into the calm of Tresco Channel. Every few moments as he rowed, he’d glance down at the girl as she lay there in Alfie’s arms, her head bleeding, her eyes closed. Jim could see no life in her. She was sleeping as if she would never wake.

Alfie talked to her all the time; he hardly stopped. Holding her tight to him as the boat reared and rolled through the waves, he kept calling to her, willing her to wake up and open her eyes, telling her it wouldn’t be long now, that she’d be all right. And sometimes Jim would join in too, whenever he could find the breath to do so, begging her to live, pleading with her, yelling at her even. “Wake up, girl! For Chrissake, wake up! Don’t you dare go and die on us, you hear. Don’t you dare!”







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ALL THE WHILE, AS JIM pulled for dear life, straining his every sinew with each stroke, the girl lay there, lifeless, in the boat, her head cradled on Alfie’s lap, as pale as death. He didn’t want to keep asking Alfie how she was, if she was still alive, because he could tell how anxious and upset his son already was. Jim longed to stop rowing, just for a moment, to see for himself if she was still breathing, but he knew he had to keep going, to get the girl back to Bryher, and to Mary, as fast as he could. Mary would know what to do, he told himself. Mary would save her.

Never had it taken so long to row up Tresco Channel, Alfie thought. He was quite sure by now that the girl must be dead, so much so that he could hardly bring himself to look at her. Close to tears all the time, he did not trust himself to speak. He kept catching his father’s eye, then looking away fast. He could not tell him how cold she was in his arms, how still, that she was gone.

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.

All this time Alfie had been staring at Lucy. “I never saw anyone who was German before,” he said. “No wonder she don’t say nothing. She can’t speak English. And she can’t understand a word we say, can she? Not if she’s German, she can’t.”

But, as he was speaking, Lucy looked up at him, and held his eyes just for a moment. But it was long enough for Alfie to know for certain that she had understood something – maybe not every word he had said, but something.







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LUCY’S MYSTERIOUS APPEARANCE FROM OUT of nowhere had been the talk of the islands for weeks now, eclipsing even the news of the war from over in France and Belgium, which had been the main anxiety and preoccupation of just about everyone in the islands since the outbreak of war nearly a year before – every islander except Uncle Billy, that is, who lived his life in another world altogether, seemingly quite oblivious to the real world around him.

All the news they read in the newspapers, or picked up from any passing sailors coming into port at St Mary’s, dashed again and again their hopes of an early peace, and confirmed their worst fears. To begin with, the papers had been full of patriotic fervour and cheery optimism, every headline another rallying cry to the nation. But in recent months much of that had vanished, as they read yet more news of losses, of ‘heroic stands’, and ‘bravely fought’ battles in Belgium, or ‘strategic’ retreats in France. Armies that were going backwards and losing men by the thousands were clearly not winning – as some newspapers were still trying to insist – and most people knew it by now. None of the boys was going to be home by Christmas time, as everyone had hoped, that was for sure.

The islanders were doing their best to put a brave face on it. They tried all they could to keep the home fires burning with hope, but nothing any longer could hide the truth behind the daily reports of ever mounting casualties, those dreadful long lists in the papers of the killed, the wounded and the missing in action. And in recent months there had been four drowned sailors from Royal Navy ships washed up on the shores of Scilly, every one of them a stark reminder that the war at sea was not going well either.

These were islands accustomed enough to tragedy. ‘Lost at sea’ had always been a common enough cause here of sudden disappearance and death, as witnessed on monuments in churches all over the islands. But when the news came in that the islands had suffered their first losses of the war – two young lads whom everyone knew, Martin Dowd and Henry Hibbert – a pall of grief settled over everyone. Both had rowed in the St Mary’s gig, and both had been killed near Mons on the same day. They were Scillonians. They were family. The war had truly come home.

But it was what had happened shortly afterwards to young Jack Brody that was the most difficult to bear, particularly for the people of Bryher. He was known throughout the islands as a cheeky, cheery sort of a fellow, a bit of a show-off, the life and soul of any get-together, always boisterous and full of fun. He had joined up at sixteen – under age – the first to volunteer from the islands, full of his usual bravado and banter, bragging how, once he got out to France, he’d sort out Fritz soon enough. A couple of years older than Alfie, Jack had been his hero all the way through school, always in and out of trouble, champion at boxing, and the best footballer in the whole school without any question. He was everything Alfie admired, everything he wanted to grow up to be.

But now, only six months after going off to war, he was back home again. From time to time Alfie would see him around the island, sometimes being pushed in his wheelchair along the path by his mother, sometimes limping on crutches, a couple of medals pinned to his jacket, his left leg missing. Jack could still put a brave face on it. He’d wave wildly at anyone and everyone he saw. Miraculously, despite his destroyed mind and mangled body, the heart of him still seemed to be there. Whenever he saw Alfie, he’d call out to him, but he didn’t know any more who Alfie was. Alfie dreaded meeting him. Jack’s speech would be garbled, his head rolling uncontrollably, his mouth slack and dribbling, one eye dull and blinded. But it was the tucked-up trouser leg that Alfie could not bear to look at.

Alfie hated himself for doing it, but once or twice he had even hidden himself behind some escallonia hedge when he’d seen Jack coming, just to avoid having to meet him. Sometimes though, there was no way out, and he’d have to force himself to go over and say hello to him, to confront again the leg that wasn’t there, the livid scar across Jack’s forehead where the shrapnel had gone in, and where, as his mother told him every time they met, it was still lodged deep in his brain. “How are you today, Jack?” he’d say. And Jack would try to tell him, but the words came out as scrambled as his mind. He would keep on trying, desperate to communicate. Humiliated, frustrated and angry, Jack would often have to turn away to hide his tears, and then there seemed nothing else to do but to leave him. It shamed Alfie every time he did it.

So during that summer, for Alfie, as for so many, the finding of ‘Lucy Lost’ – as she was now known all over the islands – had been a welcome distraction. She took everyone’s mind off poor Jack Brody, and the loss of Martin and Henry. The overwhelming shadow of the war itself receded. Lucy Lost gave them all something else, something new, to talk about. Speculation was rife. Imagination ran riot. Rumours were everywhere – plausible, or implausible, it made no difference. Stories and theories abounded, anything that might possibly explain how Lucy Lost had turned up alone and abandoned on St Helen’s, with nothing but an old grey blanket and a raggedy teddy bear with one eye and a gentle smile.

How had she got there? How long had she been there? And who on earth was she anyway? Everyone wanted to know more about her, and if possible to catch a glimpse of her. A few of the most inquisitive had even gone so far as to take a trip over to St Helen’s to scour the Pest House and the island for any telltale clues. They had found nothing. All anyone knew for sure was that her name was Lucy, that this was the only word the strange little girl had ever uttered, and that Big Dave Bishop had discovered the teddy bear and the blanket in the Pest House – both presumably hers. Big Dave had talked a lot about his discovery – but, true to his word, had made no mention of the name embroidered on it. There was so little to go on. But what the islanders didn’t know about Lucy Lost, they more than made up for by invention.

The stories became more and more fantastical. It was said that Lucy was deaf and dumb, and so she had to be “a bit mazed in the head”, like Uncle Billy. Just as he was ‘Silly Billy’ to some, so she was ‘Loony Lucy’. Others thought her mother must have died in childbirth, that she had been marooned on St Helen’s, deliberately abandoned there by a cruel father who had tired of providing for her.

There were other stories going round too, that she was the child of one of those unfortunates who had been quarantined in the Pest House on the island centuries before, that she had perished there long ago, and ever since had wandered the island, a lost soul, a ghost child. Or maybe, it was said, Lucy Lost had fallen overboard from some ship in the Atlantic and had been saved from drowning by a passing whale and carried safely to shore. It could happen, some argued. Hadn’t Jonah himself been saved just like that in the Bible? And hadn’t the Reverend Morrison only recently preached a sermon about Jonah in Bryher Church, telling everyone that these stories from the Bible weren’t just stories, that they were the truth, the word of God himself, God’s truth?

Then, most fantastical of all perhaps, and certainly the most popular theory of all, there was the mermaid yarn – Alfie had heard it often enough in the schoolyard. Lucy Lost was really a mermaid, and not just any mermaid, but the famous Mermaid of Zennor, who had swum over to the Scilly Isles from the Cornish coast many years ago, who had come up out of the sea on to St Helen’s, and sat on the shore there and sung sweet songs to passing sailors and fishermen, to tempt them on to the rocks, combing her hair languorously as mermaids do. But she had grown legs – mermaids can do that, some said, like tadpoles. Doesn’t a tadpole grow legs out of a wiggly tail every spring? All right, so they might not sing songs or comb their hair, but they grow legs, don’t they? All these stories were so unlikely as to be ridiculous, laughable, and quite simply impossible. It didn’t matter. They were all fascinating and entertaining, which was probably why the mystery of Lucy Lost remained the talk of the islands for weeks and months that summer.

Most of the islanders did realise, of course, when they really thought about it, that there had to be some more rational, sensible explanation as to why and how Lucy Lost had been marooned on St Helen’s, how someone so young could have survived. They all knew that if anyone had any idea of the truth of all this then it would very likely be Jim Wheatcroft or Alfie, who had found her in the first place, or Mary Wheatcroft who was looking after her at Veronica Farm on Bryher. Surely they would know. Maybe they did know. They were certainly being overly secretive about her and protective, as they always had been about Silly Billy, ever since Mary had brought him back from the hospital. They all knew better than to ask questions about Silly Billy – he was family after all – that Mary would snap their heads off if they dared. But Lucy Lost, they thought, wasn’t family. She was simply a mystery, which was why, wherever any of the family went, they were liable to be badgered by endless questions and opinions from anyone they met.

Mary was able, for the most part, to keep herself to herself, to avoid too much of this intrusion into their lives, staying inside the farmhouse and around the farm as much as possible. But she did have to leave Lucy alone in the house, and venture off the farm at least twice a day to visit Uncle Billy to bring him his food, and tidy up around him as best she could. She’d find him in the boathouse, in the sail loft above, or more often these days out on Green Bay itself, on the Hispaniola, but always working away.

She’d been bringing him his food, seeing to his washing, cleaning around him, looking after him, for five years or more now. She’d done this every day without fail, ever since she’d brought him home from the hospital in Bodmin, from the County Asylum, or the ‘madhouse’, as everyone called it. It was on her way to and from Green Bay to see to Uncle Billy that more often than not she’d meet one or two of her neighbours on the beach. Some, she knew, had been deliberately loitering there with intent to ambush her, and, whoever it was, sooner or later they would begin to ply her with questions about Lucy Lost. It hadn’t escaped her notice that before the coming of Lucy she had hardly ever met anyone on her way to or from Uncle Billy. She fended them all off.

“She’s fine,” she’d say, “getting better all the time. Fine.”

But Lucy wasn’t fine. Her cough may not have been as rasping, nor as repetitive and frequent as before, but at night-times in particular it still plagued her. And sometimes they could hear her moaning to herself – Alfie said it was more like a tune she was humming. But moaning or humming, it was a sound filled with sadness. Mary would lie awake, listening to her, worrying. Night by night lack of sleep was bringing her to the edge of exhaustion. She gave short shrift to anyone who turned up at the door ‘just visiting’, but quite obviously trying to catch a glimpse of Lucy. Her frosty reception seemed in the end to be enough to deter even the most persistent of snoopers.

It fell to Jim much more often to confront the endless inquisitiveness about Lucy Lost. Like it or not, he had to mend his nets and his crab pots down on Green Bay, where all the fishermen on the island always gathered together to do the same thing when the weather was right. He had to see to his potatoes and his flowers in the fields. He had to fetch seaweed from the beaches for fertiliser, and to gather driftwood there for winter fires. Wherever he went, whatever he was doing, there were always people coming and going, friends, relations, and they all pestered him about Lucy Lost at every possible opportunity.

If Jim was honest with himself, he had at first quite enjoyed the limelight. He had been there with Alfie, when Lucy Lost was first discovered. They had brought her home. All the attention and admiration had not been unwelcome, at first. But after a week or two he was already tiring of it. There were so many questions, usually the same ones, and the same old quips and jokes bellowed out across the fields, or over the water from passing fishing boats.

“Caught any more mermaids today, have you, Jim?” He tried to laugh them off, to remain good-humoured about it all, but he was finding that harder by the day. And he was becoming ever more concerned about Mary. She was looking tired out these days, and not her usual spirited self at all. He’d tried to suggest, gently, that she might be taking on too much with Lucy Lost, that surely she had enough to do caring for Uncle Billy, that maybe they should think again about Lucy, and find someone else to look after her. But she wouldn’t hear of it.

Alfie too, as time passed, was being given more and more of a hard time over Lucy Lost. Every day at school, he found himself being quizzed, by teachers and children alike, and teased too.

“How old is she, Alfie?”

“What’s she look like?”

“Your mermaid, Alf, has she got scales on her instead of skin? Has she got a fish face? Green all over, Alfie, is she?”

Zebediah Bishop, Cousin Dave’s son, who took after his father and was the laddish loudmouth of the school, had always known better than most how to rile Alfie. “Is your mermaid pretty then, Alfie boy? Is she your girlfriend, eh? You done kissing with her yet? What’s it like kissing a mermaid? Slippery, I shouldn’t wonder!” Alfie did try his utmost to ignore him, but that was easier said than done.

One morning, as they were lining up in the schoolyard on Tresco to go into school, Zeb started up again. He was holding his nose and making faces. “Cor,” he said, “there’s something round ’ere that stinks awful, like fish. Could be a mermaid, I reckon. They stink just the same as fish, that’s what I heard.”

Alfie had had enough. He went for him, which was how they ended up rolling around on the ground, arms and legs flailing, kicking and punching each other, till Mr Beagley the headmaster came out, hauled them to their feet by their collars and dragged them inside. The two of them ended up in detention for that all through afternoon playtime. They had to write out a hundred times, “Words are wise, fists are foolish.”

They were not supposed to talk in detention – you got the ruler if Beastly Beagley caught you – but Zeb talked. He leaned over and whispered to Alfie: “My dad says your mermaid’s got a little teddy bear. Ain’t that sweet? Alfie’s got a girlfriend who’s got a little teddy bear, and who’s so dumb she don’t even speak. She don’t even know who she is, do she? Doolally, mad, off her ruddy rocker, like your daft old uncle, like Silly Billy, that’s what I heard. He should’ve stayed in the madhouse where he belonged, that’s what my ma says. And that’s where your little girlfriend should go, and take her teddy bear with her. Not all there in the head, is she? And I heard something else too, a little secret my dad told me, about her blanket, the one my dad found on that island. I know all about it, don’t I? She’s German, she’s a Fritzy, your smelly girlfriend, isn’t she?”

Alfie was on his feet in a flash, grabbing Zeb and pinning him against the wall, shouting in his face, nose to nose. “Your dad promised he wouldn’t tell. He promised. If you say anything about that blanket, then it’ll make your dad a big fat liar, and I’ll—”

Alfie never finished because that was the moment when Mr Beagley came storming in, and pulled them apart. He gave each of them six of the best with the edge of the ruler, on their knuckles this time. There was nothing in the world that hurt more than that. Neither Alfie nor Zeb could stop themselves from crying. They were stood in the corner all through last lesson after that. Alfie stared sullenly at the knots in the wood panelling in front of his face, trying to forget the shooting pain in his knuckles, fighting to hold back the tears. The two dark knots looked back at him, a pair of deep brown eyes.

Lucy has eyes like that, he thought. Eyes that look into you, unblinking, eyes that tell you nothing. Empty eyes.







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STANDING THERE IN THE CORNER, Alfie forced himself to go on thinking of Lucy – anything to take his mind off the agony of his knuckles. He decided he was in two minds about her. He liked having her there in the house. He hadn’t been sure about it at first, mostly because his mother seemed to have become so preoccupied with Lucy that she seemed to have less time for him or for anyone else. Alfie had seen her before like this. It was how she’d been with Uncle Billy, during her long search for him, then her determined campaign, with Dr Crow’s help, to get him out of the asylum in Bodmin, and bring him home so she could look after him. He had understood then why she had to do it, as he understood now that it was the right and proper thing to do, to take Lucy Lost in. He was doing his best to persuade himself not to mind too much.

But he did mind, and he knew his father did too, though nothing had been said. He remembered then what his father always said to him, whenever he needed cheering up: “Always look on the bright side, Alfie.” It wasn’t easy, but as he stood there in the corner feeling miserable, his knuckles paining him, he tried to do it.

At least, he thought, he had a companion in the house now, a sort of sister, however strange, however silent. And he did like going upstairs to see her. He’d even read to her sometimes if his mother asked him to, and he’d never read aloud to anyone before. He hadn’t ever liked reading aloud at school, in case he made mistakes – Mr Beagley didn’t like mistakes – but with Lucy Lost he’d just read the story and listen to it himself as he was doing it. And he liked taking milk and tatty cake upstairs to her for her tea when he came home from school, liked being left in the house to look after her whenever his mother went down to Green Bay to see to Uncle Billy. But he was more and more troubled by her silence, by the vacant stare she gave him. He longed for her simply to say something to him, anything. He had tried to get her to talk, to ask her questions. But she would only lie there, looking blankly up at the ceiling. Asking questions wasn’t working, because she never replied. And talking to her didn’t work, because either she didn’t understand or she wasn’t listening. She simply didn’t react or respond in any way.

Despite all this, he did look forward to being with her, and he couldn’t work out why. It was, he thought, a bit like going to see Uncle Billy down on Green Bay. With Uncle Billy, Alfie would chatter away happily for hours, and all he’d get in reply was a grunt or two, yet he knew Uncle Billy liked him to be there, even if he was deep in one of his black moods. He was sad when he was like that. Alfie could see that Lucy was sad like Uncle Billy was, that she needed company just as he did. That was enough for Alfie. He liked being company for her, as silent and strange as she was. The truth was that, even so, he liked her company too.

Alfie’s knuckles were still tingling. He tried not to think about them and turned his mind instead to Uncle Billy. Alfie knew, as everyone in the family did, that the only way to get Uncle Billy out of one of his ‘grumps’, as they called them, was to talk to him, and go on talking to him. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. You had to be patient. Uncle Billy could stay in one of his grumps for days sometimes, and, if he was really bad, he’d even stop working on the Hispaniola, and just sit there in his sail loft in the boathouse, staring into space, saying nothing, eating nothing that anyone brought him. But, sooner or later, he’d come out of it, and then there would be days and weeks when he’d be Long John Silver again, working happily on the boat all day, wearing his pirate hat, talking and singing away to himself.

Whenever Alfie visited on days like this, Uncle Billy would prattle on and on, as he worked on the Hispaniola, about Treasure Island, quoting long passages from the book. It never ceased to amaze Alfie how Uncle Billy could do that. He knew the book by heart from cover to cover, and would talk of the characters in it as if they were real people. About Jim Hawkins, he’d often say: “A good lad and a lot like you, young Alfie.” He’d talk the same way of mad Ben Gunn, or of Captain Flint, the parrot, and of course of “the good ship Hispaniola”.

Whenever he spoke of Treasure Island, Alfie knew it wasn’t just a story to him, but a real and true happening, a story he had lived, was still living whenever he spoke of it or told it. Sometimes he’d even call Alfie “Jim lad”, and Alfie realised then that, for Uncle Billy, it wasn’t just a slip of the tongue, that there were moments when, to Uncle Billy, Alfie really was Jim Hawkins. And he himself was Long John Silver, building his boat, a new Hispaniola, which one day, he said, when it was finished, he’d sail away to Treasure Island again. On those days, he’d be busy from dawn to dusk, sawing or planing or hammering away on the Hispaniola, singing out his pirate’s song at the top of his voice. “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!”

Alfie stood, face in the corner, humming Uncle Billy’s ‘Yo-ho-ho’ song softly to himself, under his breath, so that Mr Beagley could not hear. It was a song of defiance as well as a song of comfort. To hum, to move, would provoke a whack on the head from Beastly Beagley. Lucy’s eyes, the twin knots in the wood panelling, stared back at him. Talking, he thought to himself, had never worked with Lucy as it could sometimes with Uncle Billy. She stayed locked away inside herself, no matter what he said, no matter how long he stayed with her, and to him there seemed very little prospect that this would ever change. Alfie flexed his knuckles. They were still stiff with pain. He would go on talking to her, keep trying. If it worked sometimes with Uncle Billy, then it could work with Lucy. “Always look on the bright side,” he whispered to himself, louder than he had intended.

“Silence!” roared Mr Beagley.

Alfie steeled himself for the whack on the head. It came sure enough, and it hurt, but not like his knuckles hurt.

There were times in the weeks that followed when Alfie felt he was talking to Lucy only because someone had to say something, to fill the silence. He knew he was talking to himself, but he would tell her anyway, tell her all the news. He’d tell her what had gone on at school that day, who Mr Beagley had picked on in particular, who had got the cane, who had got the ruler, who had been stood in the corner, or about the peregrine falcon he’d seen hovering over Watch Hill, or the sleeping seal he’d seen basking on the rocks off Rushy Bay. He tried his best to make his day interesting for her, and funny too when he could, however tedious and ordinary the day had been. And some were.

Alfie may have had plenty of practice at this with Uncle Billy, but with Lucy it was different. He had no idea who he was talking to. He knew Uncle Billy, knew all about who he was, his whole sad story, how Uncle Billy was his mother’s twin brother. He’d been born and brought up with her on Bryher, but at fifteen years old, after an argument with his father, he’d run away to sea, without ever telling her. For years, his mother never knew where he had gone, nor what had happened to him.

Then she had found out how, twenty or so years later, and a master shipbuilder in Penzance by now, his wife had died in childbirth, his baby too, how grief and guilt had driven Billy mad, how he’d gone off wandering the wild moors of Cornwall, and had ended up in the County Asylum in Bodmin. Alfie’s mother had asked after him, searched for him for years, and finally tracked him down in the asylum, and, with Dr Crow’s help, had brought him home. He had one thing only with him, his mother told Alfie: a copy of Treasure Island. All through his time in the asylum he had read and read it. Talking to Uncle Billy, Alfie always had his whole life story in his head. They knew one another, trusted one another.

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.”

Mary started to her feet, tears in her eyes. “You mean the madhouse, don’t you, Doctor? That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it! Like the asylum in Bodmin, where Billy was. Over my dead body! I have been to that place. We were there together, Doctor. Or have you forgotten? It is a hell on earth, you know it is. I won’t let that happen, not again. I saw what they did to Billy in that place. For goodness’ sake, Doctor, you helped me get Billy out of there. You know how they’re treated. They don’t live, poor souls, they just exist. It’s a prison, Doctor, not a hospital. They just lock them up and throw away the key. There’s no care in the place, no hope. No, until her mother or father comes for her, she is ours to care for. You hear me, Doctor? I’ll not let her into one of those dreadful places in a million years. We shall make her well in body and mind, you’ll see. And God will help us. Didn’t Lucy just speak to Alfie? Isn’t that a good sign?”

“Indeed it is, but I just want you to face the possibility, Mrs Wheatcroft, that’s all,” said Dr Crow.

“It is not going to happen, Doctor,” Mary whispered fiercely through her tears.

“None of us want it to happen,” the doctor went on. “All I can tell you is that if we’re to have any hope of healing her mind then you have to get her up and walking, somehow. She must be strong enough by now to walk. You have to try to get her outside.”

“I’ve tried, Doctor,” Mary told him despairingly. “Do you think I haven’t tried?”

The doctor turned to Alfie. “What about you, Alfie? You got her to speak just now. Take her round the island, take her out in the boat, maybe over to Samson to see the cottages, or down to Rushy Bay to see the seals. We’ve got to get her to take an interest in life, to get her out of herself. And Mrs Wheatcroft, you go on doing just what you’ve been doing, talk to her, read to her, care for her, but try to bring her downstairs more, get her helping in the kitchen, out on the farm.”

“She’s seems so damaged, so fragile,” Mary said. “I can’t force her, can I? How can I make her do what she doesn’t want to do?”

“Marymoo,” said Jim, reaching out and taking her hand in his. “Let’s do what the doctor says. Let Alfie try to take her out a bit. He’s more her age. She might go with him. You can’t do it all by yourself, Marymoo.”

“She’s got to learn to live again, Mrs Wheatcroft,” the doctor said, getting to his feet. “Even then we can’t be sure she’ll get well. But it’s her best hope and my best advice, that’s all. Get her up, get her moving, whether she wants to or not.”

He stopped at the door as he was leaving. “This is just an idea,” he said. “Music. Maybe music would help. I’ve got one of those wonderful gramophone contraptions back at home on St Mary’s, and some records to go with it. I’ll bring them over next time I come. Easy enough to operate: you just wind it up, put the needle on, and out comes the music. Magic. Extraordinary invention. Everyone should have one. No one would need a doctor then, put me right out of a job, but I shouldn’t mind. Very healing stuff, music.”

All that week Alfie tried, and his mother tried, but no amount of gentle persuasion or cajoling could induce Lucy to get out of bed. Then the next time Dr Crow came calling, a week or so later, he brought his gramophone with him as he had promised. As soon as he arrived, he wound it up, and put a record on. Miraculously, piano music filled the room, filled the whole house. Jim, Mary, Alfie, and the doctor, all of them simply stood there, watching the record going round and round, listening in wonder, utterly lost in the music.

“It’s Chopin,” said the doctor after a while, conducting the music with his pipe.

The stair door opened behind them. Lucy was standing there in bare feet. She was swathed in her blanket, her teddy bear in her hand. She drifted across the room towards them, towards the gramophone. For long moments, she simply stared down at it. “Piano,” she whispered, and then again, “Piano.”







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I REMEMBER I WAS PLAYING PAPA’S favourite piece on the piano when Old Mac brought the letter in. Old Mac was Papa’s uncle and had always lived with us in the house, along with Aunty Ducka who had been my nanny and nurse. She had looked after me all my life, taught me to sew, to make bread, and to say my prayers at night. She had looked after Mama too before me, when Mama was little. I called her ‘Ducka’, apparently, because she was the one who used to push me in my pram down to the lake in Central Park to feed the ducks every day. So Ducka I called her, and Aunty Ducka she became to everyone else too after that. And Old Mac had taught me how to fly kites in the park, and skim stones, and look after the horses and saddles. The two of them looked after just about everything else as well – house, stables, garden, our every need. Life could not have gone on without them.

I hated my daily piano practice, especially scales, but Mama had ways of persuading me every time.

Threats: “You will not be allowed to go out riding unless you practise first.”

Bribery: “Play well enough, Merry, and you can go for a ride afterwards.”

Or blackmail. Since Papa had left for the war, it was Papa she often used to blackmail me into doing my daily piano practice: “Your papa will be very disappointed in you, Merry, if you have not learnt your pieces by the time he comes home. Remember, Merry, you promised him you’d practise your scales every day.”

The trouble was that it was true, I had promised him. But I still did not like Mama reminding me of it, and I most certainly did not like her sitting there watching me either, which was why I was sulking that morning as I played my scales, with as little application as possible and no enthusiasm whatsoever, just so she would know how I felt.

The routine was always the same with Mama. She’d stay in the sitting room with me until I had played my scales three times without hesitation or mistake. Only then would she let me play what I wanted. I rarely played the pieces that my music teacher, Miss Phelps, had told me to. First of all I didn’t like her, as she was so unsmiling and severe. She frowned all the time, and had very thin lips, and several long brown whiskers growing out of the two moles on her chin. And the pieces she told me to practise were either too difficult for me or I didn’t like them – one or the other, or usually both – which was why, as soon as I’d done my scales to Mama’s satisfaction that morning, I decided not to play my practice pieces at all, and instead began playing my favourite Mozart piece, ‘Andante Grazioso’.

Papa loved it. I loved it too, because I thought it was the most beautiful tune I ever heard, because I could play it well, and because Papa loved it as much as I did. He would stand behind me sometimes, and hum along as I played. He always called it Merry’s tune, which was why I was reminded of him every time I played it. I could almost feel he was there with us in the room that morning, his hand resting on my shoulder, even though I knew he was far away at the war.

I missed him so much: seeing him coming down the path, loping like a giraffe, home from work, leaping at him, making him catch me and hold me, his deep voice in the house, sitting on his lap, his moustache tickling my ear, and listening to the gramophone with him, our games of chess together by the fire in the evenings, his footstep on the stairs coming up to say goodnight to me, reading The Ugly Duckling to me in bed. I only had to play our tune, his tune, to feel he was back home and with me again.

As I played, I forgot my sulking, forgot Mama was there, and lost myself entirely in the melody, and in thoughts of Papa. I was aware of Old Mac coming in with a letter for Mama, and leaving moments afterwards, and paid little attention as Mama read it. But then she started up suddenly out of her chair, hand to her mouth, choking back her tears. At once I dreaded the worst.

“What, Mama?” I cried, rushing over to her. “What is it?”

“It’s from your papa,” she said, recovering a little by now. “It’s all right, he’ll be all right. He’s been wounded. He’s in hospital, in England, somewhere in the country he says.”

“Is he bad? Will he die, Mama? He won’t die, will he?”

“He says we’re not to worry, that he’ll be up and about in no time.” She was reading fast, turning the page, but saying nothing.

“What’s he say, Mama? Can I read it? Please?” I asked. But she was hardly hearing me.

“It’s to you as well,” she replied, handing me the letter at last. As I was reading, I could hear his voice in every word.

My dearest Martha, my dearest Merry,

Since I last wrote, I am afraid things have not gone too well with the regiment or with me. We were putting up a good enough fight, holding the Germans back around Mons as best we could, but there always seemed to be too many of them and too few of us, and the worst of it was they always had more men, and more horses and guns too. Big guns. There was nothing for it. We had to pull back. No army likes to retreat, but we did so in good enough order, and I know the men are still determined and in good heart, despite all the reverses and all the terrible losses we have suffered. They will stand now and hold their ground, I am sure of it.

Unfortunately though, I am no longer with them. I have been luckier than many, far too many. We have lost so many fine and brave young men, no more than boys some of them. A few weeks ago I was wounded in my shoulder, shrapnel it was, and it broke my bone. They took me out of the battle and, after a couple of days in a field hospital in France, they have shipped me back to England, to a rather grand old mansion like many you see on Long Island, but grander still, which they have transformed into a military hospital for Canadian officers. It is not too far from London, and is called Bearwood House. Isn’t that a strange and extraordinary coincidence? I am lying in a hospital in England that goes by the very same name as our cottage in Maine. In so many ways this place reminds me of our holidays there. I look out of my window and see great trees, and at night I can often see the moon riding high through the dark clouds. I sing to the moon and I listen to the moon, as I promised. I hope you do too, Merry.

We have a park where we sit when it is sunny – which is not very often, I have to say – and a lake with ducks that cruise about as if they own the place, very much as they do on our lake in Central Park. So, eyes open or eyes closed, I can imagine myself back at home in New York or in Maine. There are many Canadian officers here, so I am among friends. I must count myself a very fortunate fellow.

I am comfortable enough now, and well cared for, although I find I cannot use my left arm at all. How lucky I am that it was not my right shoulder. I can at least write to you. They tell me that in time, when the wound is healed and my bone is mended, I shall make a full recovery. So with a bit of luck I shall be back at the Front with the men in a month or two. But, for the moment, it is good to be out of it for a while. It is quiet here, and peaceful, so very peaceful. I wonder if there is anything in the world more beautiful than peace.

I long to see you both again, and think of you often, of your dear faces, of Old Mac and Aunty Ducka, our home in New York, of the trees and ducks in the park, and the rocks we climbed, and the rides we had there on Bess and Joey, and the little black squirrels – they are all grey here in England – of the cottage in Maine and the seashore, the fishing and the sailing we did together there, all the old familiar things. How happy we were before all this. But I have to be over here, you know that.

Merry, keep practising the piano, and not just the Mozart piece even though, as you know, I love it the best. Groom Bess and Joey well each morning and pick out their hooves before you go riding. And remember to tighten Joey’s girth properly – you know how he blows himself out just to fool you. I like to think of you riding out with Mama in the park – you both look so very fine on horseback. I can see you now walking by the lake, and stopping by our favourite bench. Do you remember, Merry? That was where I first read you The Ugly Duckling, and there would be ducks all around our feet sometimes, and listening too when they weren’t quacking.

Dearest Martha, dearest Merry, do not worry about me. All will be well. Be sure, we shall in time win this war, and then I shall be home, and we shall be together again.

Ever, with my fondest love to you both, and to Old Mac and Aunty Ducka too. You are all dearer to me than you will ever know.

Papa

“Oh, Merry,” said Mama, tearful again now. “Why did I listen to him? I told him when he went to England that we should go with him, to be near him. But oh no, he wouldn’t hear of it. He can be so obstinate sometimes, your papa. ‘You have to stay home in New York, where it is safe,’ he said. ‘The war is being fought at sea too, you know,’ he said. ‘It is far too dangerous for you to cross the Atlantic. There are enemy submarines out there, warships. And, after all, Merry has to go to school, and she has to do her piano lessons. When all’s said and done,’ he said, ‘it’s best you stay in New York, and stay safe.’ Oh, why did I listen to him, Merry? Why?”

I remember only too well the arguments before Papa went. There had been so many of them, so much begging and pleading, first that he should not go at all, but then, if he really had to, that he should at least take us with him. But he was determined to go, and equally determined that we should stay. Mama and I went down to the docks that day to see him off together. I may not have wanted him to leave, but in my heart of hearts I was so proud that he was, so proud to see him looking grand and smart and neat in his uniform. Even his moustache looked neater. And he stood taller in it somehow too. I remember how he held me to him on the dockside that last time, remember the words he whispered in my ear.

“And be good to Mama, Merry. Don’t be a nincompoop with her.” I loved it when he called me a nincompoop, or a ninny. It’s what he always said when he was trying to tick me off, but he always said it with a smile. I loved being ticked off by Papa, and loved the smile that went with it. “Whenever I see the moon, Merry,” he went on, “I will think of you and sing our Mozart tune. You do the same, so that whenever we look up at the moon, wherever we are, we shall listen to the moon, and hear one another and think of one another. Promise me.” I promised, and I kept that promise too. And watched him walk away, with that long, loping stride of his.

How often afterwards did I look up at the moon and hum our tune, how often did I listen to the moon and think of him. I kept that promise.

That day when the letter came, I crouched down in front of Mama and took her hands in mine. “Silly old school, silly old piano lessons,” I told her. “You were right all along, Mama. We shall go. They have schools in England, haven’t they? And they’ve got piano teachers over there too, and probably a lot less whiskery than Miss Phelps. Let’s go, Mama. We have to go. We can’t just leave Papa alone in hospital. Didn’t he say how much he wants to see us? It’s his way of telling us to come, I know it is.”

“Do you think so, Merry? Do you really think so? What about the house, and the horses? I mean, who’ll look after everything?”

“The same people who look after everything all the time, Mama,” I told her. “When we go up to the cottage in the summer, doesn’t Old Mac see to the garden and the horses, Mama? He loves the garden, and he loves Joey and Bess to bits, you know he does. And they love him too. And while we’re up in the cottage in Maine, having a grand time sailing and fishing and picnicking and all, doesn’t Aunty Ducka keep everything in the house just fine? We have to go, Mama. Papa wants us. He needs us.”

“You’re right, Merry,” said Mama, holding out her arms to me and hugging me close. “It’s decided then. We shall go to England and see your papa as soon as possible.”

We sat down that evening and wrote a letter back to Papa, writing alternate sentences as we often did in our letters to him. It ended with me writing in capital letters,

WE ARE ON OUR WAY, DEAREST PAPA.

It took several weeks to arrange passage across the Atlantic. At school, when it became known I would be leaving soon, and going to England, most of my friends and teachers seemed more put out than sad, the teachers warning me how unwise and reckless it was to go anywhere near Europe these days, “with that terrible war going on over there”. They’d been the same when they heard Papa had joined up and gone to France the year before.

“Surely he doesn’t need to go,” said my teacher, Miss Winters, who seemed more upset than anyone by it. “I mean, after all, Merry, I thought he was Canadian, not British. So there’s no call for him to go. This war is a quarrel between the British and the Germans. What has Canada got to do with it, for goodness’ sake? I don’t understand it.”

I tried to explain Papa’s decision to join up to her as he had explained it to me: that all his old school and college friends from Toronto, in Canada, were going, that although he had lived and worked for some time in America, he was Canadian through and through, and proud of it. He belonged now with his friends, he had told me, with the boys he grew up with. If they were fighting, he should be too. He had to go. He had no choice.

Miss Winters had always been most vociferous in her opinions, something I had always admired in her, and she was again now when I told her I would be leaving school and going over to England. “Well, I’ve got to say what’s in my heart, Merry. I think it’s just plain wrong, I really do, you going off and leaving us all of a sudden like this, and you doing so well in your lessons. Your reading and your writing too are coming on so well, and they have never been easy for you, I know. You going like this, it’s a crying shame! Don’t get me wrong, Merry, I know why you and your mama think you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, we all do; and believe me, we’re mighty sorry your papa got wounded over there. But truth be told – and there are times you have to tell the truth as you see it, as you feel it – I don’t think your papa should have gone over there to fight in the first place. I mean, what does all this fighting, all this killing and wounding, ever achieve? It’s no way for civilised folk to sort out right from wrong. Never was, never will be. I can tell you one thing for certain sure, Merry, we aren’t going to send our American boys over there to France to fight in that war, not if I have anything to do with it, that’s for certain sure.” For certain sure was one of Miss Winters’ favourite expressions. “I want you to promise me one thing, Merry,” she went on. “Once your papa’s all well again, you’ll come right back here to New York with him, where you belong, and finish your education with me. You hear me now?”

She was near to tears by the time she’d finished. I liked Miss Winters a whole lot. All my life I’d had difficulties with reading and writing. Every other teacher I’d had, sooner or later, lost patience with me, because I couldn’t read properly what was up on the blackboard or in school books like the others could, because I would take forever to write my letters and words, and even then they weren’t right. All this only made things worse. Everything would go haywire in my head, letters and words would jump over one another, jumble together, and I would panic. I was often accused of not paying attention, of being lazy and stupid.

Miss Winters though had always explained things carefully, helped me through my difficulties, and given me time to think, to work things out. She was full of encouragement. “Your writing and reading may not be the best, Merry,” she told me once, “but you play the piano wonderfully well, and you draw like an artist, like a true artist.” She had a way of making me feel good about myself, about my drawings and paintings in particular. And she was the only teacher in the school who really meant what she said, who wasn’t afraid to show her true feelings. We’d often hear her voice tremble and break with emotion, especially when she was reading Longfellow’s poems. She loved those poems so much, which was why, I guess, we did too, most of us. Compared to her, the rest of my teachers were all so stiff and proper and buttoned up. Goodbyes with them were all very formal. Miss Winters though hugged me tight and long, reluctant to let me go. “God bless, Merry,” she whispered in my ear. “You take care, you hear me.”

Of all my friends, I knew it was only Pippa I’d really miss, Pippa Mallory. She had been my best friend since the very first day at school five years before, probably to the exclusion of any other close friendship. She was the only one who had never once teased me about my reading and writing, who had not, at one time or another, made me feel stupid. We had been almost constant companions, always in the same class at school, sitting beside one another whenever we could, walking home together, skipping through the leaves, stomping through the snow, feeding the ducks on the lake in the park, going riding, going out boating. She’d come with us to Maine most summers. The hardest thing I had to do before I left was to break the news to Pippa that I was leaving, that I had to go to England to see Papa in hospital, and so I wouldn’t be coming back for a while, not till the war was over. She hardly left my side after I told her. She never spoke about my leaving. She was the only one who never tried to persuade me I shouldn’t be going, who just seemed to understand that I had to, and left it at that.

On the last day she never even said goodbye. When the time came, she couldn’t bring herself to speak and neither could I. We stood there by the school gates, two best friends so used to telling one another our deepest secrets, revealing our highest hopes, confiding in each other our most terrible fears, and now we couldn’t even find the words to say goodbye. We stood in awkward silence for some moments. In the end she handed me an envelope, then turned from me quickly, and ran off.





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