Listen to the Moon. Michael Morpurgo

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ