Listen to the Moon

  BUT MARY COULD NOT AND would not let it rest there. Jim had been right. She was determined now. They would both go over to Tresco, confront Mr Beagley together, and have it out with him. It was Alfie who, in the end, managed to dissuade them. “If you go and see him, it’ll just make things worse for us,” he told them. “Beastly will only take it out on us. That’s how he is. We got Miss Nightingale on our side. She can look after Lucy.”

  “And who looks after you?” Mary asked him.

  “I do, Mother,” he replied. “I look after me, and I look after Lucy. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the way things are. I wouldn’t mind if I never set foot in that lousy school again. And Lucy don’t like it any more than I do. I don’t never know, not really, not for sure, what she’s thinking. But I do know she don’t like it over there. She don’t need no words to tell me that. But we look after one another. Don’t you worry none.”

  There were times, particularly on the way home from school each day, when Lucy seemed sunk in misery. Time and again, Alfie did try to explain to her why it was that everyone had changed so much towards them, that Cousin Dave had told everyone about her blanket, about the German name on it, about the war, about how people hated the Germans, how Martin Dowd and Henry Hibbert, whom everyone on the islands had known, had been killed out in Belgium, and about Jack Brody who had come home with one leg and half mad, how German submarines were sinking so many ships, like the Lusitania, and drowning so many of our sailors.

  Lucy seemed to listen to him well enough, but how much, if anything, she was really understanding he could not tell. He did notice that if he talked too much, for too long, she would simply stop listening. And this made him think that she had perhaps understood quite enough not to want to hear any more about it, that everything he was talking about was troubling her too much, that she wanted not to know, that she wanted him simply not to talk, to shut up. So he did.

  All she wanted, it seemed to Alfie, when she got home every day from school, was to have her cake and milk as quickly as possible, and then, whatever the weather, go out at once for a ride on Peg, who was always waiting for them as usual outside the door. Whenever he could, when he wasn’t needed out on the boat with Jim or on the farm, he’d go with her. They’d go riding all over the island, galloping along Rushy Bay, trotting up through the heather on Heathy Hill, walking the coastal path around Hell Bay. They would clamber in among the cairns on Shipman Head. Peg was sure-footed, and seemed to relish a good clamber, the steeper and rockier the better. If the tide was low enough, they’d go splashing through the shallows all the way across to Tresco and then to Samson Island, and up over the sand dunes, on to the path through the bracken up to the deserted cottages by the well. Here they’d sit down out of the wind, and have a rest and a drink, before mounting up again for the ride back home, before the tide came in and cut them off.

  The two of them rode as one now, taking turns up front, the one clinging on to the other, loving every moment of it, never wanting it to end, never wanting to come home. They’d go anywhere where there was no one about, where there would be no one to glare at them or shout at them. Only riding round the island on Peg, and on their own, could they seem to be able to forget entirely about school and Beastly Beagley, the cruel looks, the harsh words and the stinging fists – all of it. They’d come trotting home along Green Bay, scattering the oystercatchers and gulls and turnstones as they came, their spirits lifted and renewed. As they came past the Hispaniola, they would sometimes see Uncle Billy working away on deck. They would keep their distance. They knew better than to interrupt him. But if he wasn’t on board they would ride round and round the boat, to see what progress had been made. Day by day, the lugger was looking nearer to completion. The bowsprit was in place, all the masts now. “I never thought Uncle Billy could do it, put the Hispaniola to rights as he has,” Alfie told Lucy one day as they rode round it once more. “No one did. She’s beautiful. Isn’t she?”

  One evening, late, after just such a ride, they jumped down and left Peg as usual to have a drink in her favourite puddle by the gate. They were walking up through the field towards the farmhouse when they saw Mary on her knees, washing down the front door, scrubbing at it hard. She heard them coming and stood up. Alfie had never seen her look so upset. Then, as they came closer, they saw what it was that she had been trying to scrub off. Painted across the door in great white letters were the words: ‘Remember the Lusitania’.

  Lucy walked up to the door and stood there, staring at it, her head on one side. Then she reached out her hand. She seemed to be tracing the letters one by one with her finger. “Don’t do that,” Mary snapped, pulling her hand away, and wiping her fingers roughly on her apron. “You’ll get paint all over yourself. It says Lusitania, Lucy.” She read it out slowly for her then, syllable by syllable. “Lu… sit… an… ia.”

  Mary was looking closely at Lucy then, frowning at her, lifting her chin, to look deep into her eyes. “You’ve heard of it? You have, haven’t you, Lucy? Look at me, Lucy. When I said it, you recognised that name, didn’t you? I saw you did.” There was real anger in her voice now. She took Lucy by the shoulders and swung her round to face her. “Lucy, you have to speak to me. You can, I know you can. You have to tell us. It was a ship, a very big ship, and they sank her. The Germans sank her. She was torpedoed, a few months ago now. It was a terrible, cruel thing to do. Over a thousand people died. Have you heard about it? Did they tell you?” She was shouting at her now, shaking her. “Who told you, Lucy? Did they tell you in Germany? Are you German, Lucy? Are you? Why don’t you speak to us? Why?”

  Alfie stepped between them, rounding on his mother, as angry now as she was. “Because she can’t, Mother! She can’t speak to you, nor to any of us. You know she can’t. You’re frightening her, Mother, can’t you see? Don’t shout at her. Everyone shouts at us all day. Don’t you start.”

  Mary dissolved suddenly into tears. “For God’s sake, just ask her, please, Alfie. Ask her if she’s German. Surely she knows that much. Ask her. We’ve been looking after her all this time, we got a right to know, haven’t we?”

  “But I thought you said it didn’t matter, Mother,” Alfie said. “Whether she’s German or not, she’s one of us now. That’s what you said. Family, you said, remember?”

  “And so she is,” Mary cried. “It don’t matter to me, Alfie, not one jot. Course it don’t. But look at the door! It matters to them, don’t it? Think who done this. Our friends, our neighbours. They hate us now.”

  “You think I don’t know that, Mother?” Alfie said. “You think Lucy don’t know? It’s not her fault. None of this is her fault.” Mary looked at Lucy then, saw the hurt and bewilderment in her eyes, and realised what she had said, what she had done.

  “Oh, Lucy,” she cried, “how could I say such things to you? How could I? I didn’t mean it, not like that. I’m sorry, so sorry.” She opened her arms to her. Lucy hesitated only for a moment, and then ran to her. They held one another, Mary rocking her gently to her and sobbing. “Forgive me, Lucy. Forgive me.” Lucy reached up slowly, and touched her face.

  That was when Alfie noticed the broken glass on the ground all around their feet. He looked up. Two window panes had been shattered.

  “Lucy’s bedroom,” he said. “They done that?”

  “The stone landed on her bed, and some of the glass too,” Mary told him. “She could have been hurt, hurt bad. How could they? How could they do such a thing? When I brought Uncle Billy home a few years back, some of them didn’t like it, and some of them still don’t like having him about even now, I know that. But they leave him be. They never did anything like this, not like this.”

  “We’ll mend it, Mother,” Alfie said. “We’ll put it right.”

  Mary was trying hard to put a brave face on it. But this latest incident had angered her, and hurt her, so much so that she could not lift her spirits, not even for the children. Lucy went inside, put on a record, and went upstairs to be alone, leaving
Alfie and his mother sitting at the kitchen table, both of them deep in thought.

  “Which is she, Alfie?” Mary asked after a while, leaning forward across the table, her voice low. “Honestly. What d’you think? German? English?” Alfie didn’t have time to answer. “If she turns out to be German,” she went on, “like they’re saying she is – and like they all hope she is too – they’ll take her away from us. You know that, don’t you, Alfie? Seems to me that’s what they always wanted to do, one way or another – to take her away from us. First the Vicar says that all she’s good for is the madhouse in Bodmin. And there’s plenty who’ve been saying the same. Then Mr Beagley says she’ll be taken away if I don’t send her to school. So we send her to school, and, when we do, they treat her like this. Now she’s German – well, according to them she is. And they’re saying she should be sent off to some prison camp for enemy aliens, or some such place, and all because of a German name on her blanket. They won’t do it. They can’t, because they won’t never be able to prove it, not after what I done.”

  “What d’you mean, Mother?” Alfie asked.

  “I done it a long time ago, just in case,” she said, leaning closer, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. “I always thought this might happen. Cousin Dave is a blabbermouth, known for it. I never thought he could keep his mouth shut for long – I knew that sooner or later he’d talk. Then they’d be bound to want to see the blanket, wouldn’t they? So I cut the name tape off. It was falling away anyway, only held on by a stitch or two. None of you have noticed, have you? And nor has Lucy. And, just to be sure, I checked that teddy bear of hers at the same time. Lucky I did. Found a label on it. Steiff or something, it said. Bit of a foreign-looking sort of a word too, I thought. Not hardly English, is it? So I cut that off as well.” There was no disguising her satisfaction.

  “Good thing I did too. While you was at school today, they came round, Reverend Morrison, Cousin Dave, a dozen or more of them, a whole delegation from all over, wanting to see the blanket. So I showed them, didn’t I? The blanket and the teddy bear. You should’ve seen Cousin Dave’s face, Alfie,” she went on, with a laugh. “I’m telling you, it was a picture, a real picture!”

  “So it’s all right then,” Alfie said. “They can’t think she’s German any more, can they?”

  “But that’s the thing,” Mary told him. “They do. People believe what they want to believe, Alfie. They got it in their heads she’s a Fritzy now, and that’s that. Mr Beagley tells everyone she don’t speak cos she speaks German. She does it deliberate, he says, to hide it, so’s we can’t tell she’s German, cos she don’t want us to know it. And that’s what worries me, Alfie, worries me sick. I mean, what if he’s right? I want her to speak, course I do, but I don’t want her to speak German.”

  “She’s English, Mother,” Alfie said. “She’s got to be. She listens, she understands, not everything maybe, but enough. She nods sometimes, smiles. Don’t you worry none, Mother, Lucy’s English, sure as eggs is eggs.”

  “I been thinking about that too,” said Mary. “She understands all right – I seen it in her face. But maybe that’s because she’s learnt it a little, English I mean. She could have picked it up, since she’s been here. You talk to her all the time, don’t you? And she listens to you, and she listens to us. So that’s maybe how she can understand a little English. But she don’t speak it, do she?” she said. At that moment Lucy came down to put on a new record, and went to sit on Mary’s lap. Both of them felt they couldn’t talk about it any more, not with her there.

  That evening a storm blew in. No boats went out the next day, nor the next, no fishing boats, and no school boat, which came as a blessed relief for Alfie and Lucy. The wind howled about the chimneys, rain lashed against the windows, lanes became rivers, birds were buffeted about the skies. In Green Bay, all the boats, the Hispaniola among them, rolled and tossed and reared on their moorings.

  On the Sunday morning, they woke to blue skies and still trees and a calm sea. Mary went off to church, alone, determined not to expose the children to any further hostility, but equally determined not to be intimidated herself. Nothing and no one was going to keep her from going to church. She would face them down. When she came back, she stood in the doorway, in tears, unable at first to speak at all.

  “What is it, Marymoo?” Jim asked her.

  “It’s Jack Brody,” she said. “He’s dead.”

  Everyone on the island was there in church four days later for the funeral. They sat alone, as usual, in their pew, until Dr Crow joined them, for which they were all grateful. When Mary went up to Mrs Brody after the burial to express her sadness, Mrs Brody turned her back on her and walked away. Dr Crow accompanied them back home afterwards, and sat with them for a while, listening to the gramophone, to Lucy’s favourite piece, which she put on and played over and over again. They sat in silence, and let the music fill them.

  From Dr Crow’s Journal, 17th October 1915

  I would never have believed that a people usually so kind and generous-hearted, so courteous and considerate, could become in so short a time so vindictive and spiteful, so wicked and vengeful. It seems people are as fickle as the weather. Just as the world about us can be balmy and calm and peaceful one day, and the next completely transformed by tumultuous seas and roaring winds and angry clouds, so I have learnt a people can turn and change, all kindness and gentleness banished by malice and bigotry.

  We all have, I am bound to acknowledge, a darker side. There is a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in all of us. But I have never before witnessed such a transformation in almost an entire community. I am known – along with a few others on these islands, Mrs Wheatcroft for one – as someone who has spoken out against this war. In recent months, I have had to endure some criticism, some adverse comments and even the occasional insulting remark, but all this has been as nothing compared with the indignities and unpleasantness visited upon the Wheatcroft family during these last days and weeks.

  Like so many others from all over the islands I went across to Bryher today for the funeral of poor Jack Brody. I knew, as indeed did everyone there, his mother included, that death could not have come too soon for poor Jack. For him, it was nothing but a blessed release. But at the funeral service, this was no consolation to anyone.

  His mother had found him in the morning in bed, his face turned to the wall. He had just had enough, she told me when I came to see her on Monday last, to discover the cause of death. I believe she was right. Upon examination I think it likely Jack died of heart failure. That is what I wrote on the certificate, but it would be nearer the truth to say that he died from sadness. I wonder how many there have been, or will be, like Jack Brody in this war, young, brave, with so much to live for, but left so wounded and scarred in body and soul, that all will to live is destroyed.

  I sat beside the Wheatcroft family in church today, because I could see that no one else would. As with most funerals I have attended of young people, the grieving was particularly painful for everyone to bear. But coming, as it did, hard upon the news of yet more merchantmen sunk off Scilly in the Western Approaches, with the endless appalling losses reported from every front, feelings were running high.

  The Reverend Morrison in his sermon caught the mood perfectly when he declared, in his customary sanctimonious tones, that the suffering and the death of Jack Brody, the cowardly and barbaric execution of Nurse Edith Cavell in Belgium, and the sinking of the Lusitania with such great loss of life that had so shocked the entire world, could leave none of us in any doubt, “any doubt” he repeated, looking right at us in our pew, “that this war is a godly war, a righteous struggle for good against evil, that we all have to do our part and fight the good fight”.

  Reverend Morrison would not acknowledge me, nor even look me in the eye after the funeral service – punishment no doubt for my known views on the war, as well as for my evident solidarity with the Wheatcroft family.

  I did not stay for the gathering in the hall afterwa
rds, but instead walked back to Veronica Farm with the Wheatcrofts, to whom, it seemed, no one wished to speak either. I had heard talk in recent days of the goings-on at Mr Beagley’s school, ever since Big Dave Bishop’s story had got about, how cruelly Lucy and Alfie had been treated by the children and Mr Beagley alike. Knowing Mr Beagley, I was not at all surprised at this news.

  I had met up with Jim Wheatcroft by chance, a few days before, whilst on my rounds on Tresco. He had brought in his catch to sell, and was sitting on the quayside, looking not at all his usual cheerful self. He told me about how, on account of the blanket, no one came to buy his fish these days, that most people – some of them family – would not even speak to him any more. Wherever he went, they shunned him. They were treating Mary the same, and the children too. He wasn’t just disgruntled, he was angry, angrier than I ever thought he could be. He told me he would never speak to Cousin Dave again. He did say also that, when it came down to it, all of it was because of the war, that I had been right about it, and so had Mary, that it was poisoning people through and through, all over the islands. Then, thanking me for my friendship to them and for my efforts on Lucy Lost’s behalf, he had wished me well and left me.