Listen to the Moon

  What was certain was that my island was completely deserted, except for the gulls that watched me wherever I went, that wheeled above me, mewing and screeching, making it quite clear to me that they resented my intrusion into their world. The little piping birds that scavenged the foreshore and the seaweed and the rock pools seemed to accept me, but they hardly noticed I was there. They ignored me. They were pretty, but they were little consolation to me. I was overwhelmed now by such misery as I had never known before, by a sense of complete hopelessness and isolation. I didn’t have any idea what to do, except to get up and explore my island more thoroughly.

  I had discovered already that the island was not just small, but tiny. I walked all around it in no time at all, and was very soon back to my ruined house again, which was just as well, because another squall was blowing up, whipping the sea into a frenzy of waves, and blowing the gulls and crows about the sky like leaves. I reached my house just as the rain came down, and crawled again into the shelter of my fireplace. Hunger was gnawing at me, and I was weak from emptiness. I had to eat. But I knew now I had to make my food last, that I might find very little else to eat in this place. So I ate just enough to keep me going, and no more. Between them, the sausage and bread and water warmed me through and gave me new strength to try to work things out in my mind.

  My only hope, I decided, lay in reaching one of those other islands; that was obvious to me now. But they were unreachable. I had no boat. I could not even try to swim that far. I may be able to see them, but they might just as well have been a hundred miles away. Even if there were people living on them, they couldn’t see me. I could not shout or scream. I had no voice. I couldn’t light a fire. I had no matches. I had only one choice, it seemed to me.

  There was a huge rock behind my house, a rock that dominated the whole island. It was, without question, the highest and most visible point on the island. I would climb up there – although I could see that might be far from easy – reach the top, and, once there, look out for a passing boat. Then I would wave, stand there and wave, until someone saw me. Sooner or later, someone out there, on one of those islands, or out in a boat, would have to see me, and come to my rescue. I made up my mind there and then to climb that rock.

  I left everything behind on the stone seat in the fireplace – I knew I would need both hands free for the climb – and set off towards the foot of the rock. Standing there, looking up, it was an even more daunting prospect than I had imagined – higher, steeper, and terrifying. But I had to do it. I had no choice. I started to climb, trying not to look down, concentrating only on reaching the top. It was treacherous in places, where the rock was slippery from the rain. My legs trembled with the effort of it, and with fear too. Whenever my fingers or my foot slipped, my heart would race. I could feel the pounding of it in my ears sometimes. I kept telling myself that every small step upwards was bringing me closer, that I could do it, I would do it. By the time I reached the top, I had no breath left, no strength in my arms or legs. I wanted to stand up and punch the air in triumph, but all I could do was sit there, heaving and breathless, trying to recover.

  I looked around me. There were islands everywhere, near and far, many more then I had thought, like large and small dumplings scattered all over the sea. Now, in sudden bright sunlight, the sea was turning from turquoise to green before my eyes. On some islands, the bigger ones, I could see the lines of cottages, farms and churches too. And there were people. I could see them quite plainly now, tiny figures in the distance, making their way along the seashore, standing on quays, working in the fields. And there were boats coming in, going out. My exhaustion suddenly forgotten, I was on my feet at once and waving wildly with both arms. Forgetting myself, I tried to shout. But the best I could manage was a hoarse whisper, more like a gasp, and even that was hurting my throat so much that I had to stop.

  How long I must have stood there waving I do not know. Wherever I looked, there were fishing boats out and about all around the islands. It was the boats that kept me waving. But I could see in the end that none were coming anywhere near my island, that I was too far away from them to be noticed, however hard I waved. But I waved all the same – what else could I do? I waved until my shoulders were on fire with pain, till I could scarcely lift my arms at all. I stood there and waited, hoping and praying that one of the fishing boats might turn and sail in my direction. When at last one of them did, I found the strength to wave yet again. But, even as I was doing it, I knew it was futile. The gulls seemed to know it too. They wheeled above me, cackling at me, mocking me. Then they began diving on me, trying to drive me off the rock. But I would not go.

  All day long I stayed there, hoping against hope that my luck would change, that someone would come near enough to see me. I was sitting, hugging my knees against the cold, too tired to wave any more, too tired even to stand. An evening wind had got up and I was now chilled to the bone and shivering uncontrollably. But I still stayed, still hoped. Only when darkness came did I accept defeat, and began the long climb down. By then, my legs were stiff and I could no longer feel my fingers or my feet. I am sure that was why I fell. I must have lost my grip and slipped. I don’t know. I do not even remember the fall, only that I woke up on the ground with bracken all around me, my head and my ankle throbbing, and above me the gulls circling, cackling, mocking me again. I felt my forehead. It was sticky with blood.

  I LIMPED MY WAY BACK TO the ruined house, longing now for a drink, longing for my sausage and bread. I saw what had happened the moment I stepped through the doorway. Littered everywhere, in among the bracken and the brambles, were the remains of the brown paper bag. There wasn’t a trace of bread or sausage to be seen anywhere. My teddy bear lay face down on the ground in a puddle.

  I knew at once who the culprit was. There, on the chimney above, he sat. If gulls had lips, he’d have been licking them. He looked so pleased with himself. I picked up a stone then and hurled it at him. It clattered against the chimney, but near enough to frighten him away. He flew off squawking. It was a sort of revenge, a little triumph, but it gave me no lasting satisfaction. When you are hungry, I discovered, truly hungry, there is no satisfaction in anything but food. And if you have no food, but instead only water to drink, you drink all you can, because you need to fill your stomach with something, and something is always better than nothing. I drank all the water left in my water flask, to the last dribble, down to the last drop, gulped the lot down. The flask was empty before I ever thought of saving any for later.

  I lay curled up under my blanket on my stone seat in the fireplace, not frightened at all of the gathering darkness, not worried about how I was going to survive now on this deserted island without food or water, not concerned any more about whether or not I might be rescued – I was too angry with myself to think of any of this. I could not get it out of my head how stupid I had been not to have hidden my food away from the gulls. Why had I not thought of that? And now, to make matters worse, I had drunk the last of my water. So now I had no food, no water. What a fool I had been. Nincompoop! Ninny! Those words kept coming into my head again and again.

  Cold crept through my blanket that night and seeped into my whole being. I could not sleep for coughing and shivering. Then, as if by a miracle, the dark clouds scudding across the night sky seemed to part, to be drawn aside like curtains, and there, bright and full and lovely, was the moon. At the sight of it, I began to hum softly. I had no idea why. I only knew that hearing the sound of my voice, knowing that I had a voice again, even if I could only hum, lifted my spirits. So, as I watched the moon above, I went on humming. I may not have been able to make words, but I could make a tune. I hummed myself to sleep that night.

  I woke, and there was a glimmer of dawn in the sky above. I was cold and cramped and thirsty. I got to my feet, forgetting altogether my twisted ankle. I felt a sharp stab of pain. It gave beneath me and I fell. I tried to stand again, tried to walk, leaning heavily against the wall, testing to see what weight
, if any, I could put on my ankle. There was no strength left in it at all, and the pain was agonising if I tried to walk on it. I knew now that unless and until it healed I could never climb that rock again to wave to passing boats. But rescue seemed so much less important to me now. I had no water, no food. I had to find both. I was already more thirsty than hungry. For some reason, I had it in my head that food you can do without for a long while, but that water will keep you alive for weeks.

  I was beginning to try to think things through, to work out what I had to do to survive, and how to do it. First of all I knew I needed a stick to lean on, or some kind of crutch. I certainly could not walk without one. I had seen no trees on the island. But washed up on the shore, I thought, you could find driftwood. The sandy beach where I had landed might be a likely enough place to find some. It wasn’t too far. So, with the greatest of difficulty, I limped and crawled my way along the track, slid down the dunes on my backside, and was back on the beach. There was no driftwood to be seen, nothing but a line of shells and seaweed left by the tide. I staggered down to the water’s edge. A crab scuttled away from me into the shallows. I thought of pouncing on it at once, of catching it, and killing and eating it, but I could not bring myself to do the deed. It gave me heart though, as I watched it disappear. I could have eaten it. I would not starve in this place.

  I stood there on the sand and looked around me. This was my world now, and it was a lovely world too, a sun-dancing sea under blue, blue skies, the islands all around green and grey and yellow, the hilltops purple under the morning sun, and everywhere the piping of birds filling the air. It was truly a paradise, I thought. And there was water everywhere, but seawater, not drinking water. I could die of thirst in this paradise, and within sight of help too.

  I made my way slowly back up the beach, and had to crawl up the sand dunes on my hands and knees towards the track. Had I not been on my hands and knees, I should never have seen, lying there in among the reeds, a curl of old rope, bleached by the sun, with a pulley attached, and beside it the remains of a wooden door. Beyond it, there was driftwood, and lots of it, some half buried under the sand. This had not been washed up, I thought. It was too far from the beach, a long way from the tidemark on the sand, too high up on the dunes. And there was a huge pile of it. This had been gathered here deliberately – for what I did not know, but what I did know now was that someone had done this, which meant someone had come here. People came here! They came to do this. They could come again. Suddenly I was fired with new hope. And, a moment later, I had even more cause to feel encouraged. I pulled the pile of driftwood apart until I found what I was looking for: a piece of wood sturdy enough for a crutch, and about the right length too.

  Happier altogether now, I hobbled back towards the ruined house. I must have had water on my mind again, because a sudden thought came to me as I reached the doorway. People hadn’t only been visitors here. They had lived here once, in this house. You can’t live without water. No one can. You wouldn’t build a house on an island if there was no water. So there had to be a well somewhere, and I would find it. I would search every inch of this island until I did – it was only a small island, it couldn’t take long. Then I could take my flask and fill it up at the well as often as I needed to. I could live for at least three weeks like that. And if necessary, if I really had to, I could catch a crab and eat it. And there were limpets on the rocks too – I had seen them. I could eat those maybe. And sooner or later some fisherman would come by in his boat close enough to the island – perhaps the same person who had gathered that pile of driftwood on the dunes – and I would be found and rescued.

  All I had to do was find that well, and then wait there on the dunes every day for a boat to come by, and all the while my ankle would be healing, and then I could climb back up the rock again and wave.

  Filled with all these high and heady hopes, I began my search there and then for the well that I knew had to be there. I thought it best to start near the house. Logically, I thought, a well was more likely to be close to the house than far away on the other side of the island. I thought, too, a well would be easy enough to find. I was wrong. The bracken and the brambles that seemed to cover most of the island were head-high. I could find no path through them. I had to beat my way through the undergrowth, swiping and swinging with my crutch as I went. There were places where the bracken grew too high and too thick to venture, where brambles tore at my legs and whipped me across my face and my neck. It was a jungle.

  All that day and the next I kept up my search, and I was not going entirely hungry either, because I was finding enough tiny unripe blackberries to sustain me, to keep the hunger at bay. But my longing for water was fast becoming a craving. I was reduced to going on all fours and sipping from puddles whenever I found one. There were not many, and the water was foul. I was still searching for a well, but as time passed, with less purpose, less determination and less hope. My heart was not in it. I hadn’t the strength to slash my way through the jungle of bracken and brambles any more, to go searching in thickets where I hadn’t been before. I was wandering about more aimlessly all the time, the growing hopelessness of my situation reducing me often to tears. At nights, the cuts and scratches I had all over me now would not let me sleep, and the pain in my ankle was constant. I lay curled up under my blanket, holding my teddy bear close to me, and trying to rock myself to sleep. But nothing could banish the hunger cramps that tormented me.

  I didn’t hum my tune to the moon any more, because there was no moon, and if ever I tried to hum now it gave way to whimpering, and to sobbing even. I tried so hard not to sob, not because I was trying to be brave – my sense of despair had brought me way beyond that – but because I knew that if I gave way to the sobbing I would soon find myself wracked by fits of coughing that would not leave me, that shook my whole body.

  How many days passed, and how many nights, I do not know. But one night as I was lying there, trying to rock myself into sleep and out of my coughing, trying to forget my stinging legs, my throbbing ankle, a great storm blew in, the wind howling round in the chimney, flashes of lightning turning night to day above me. Until that point, I had been dry enough in the fireplace, but now rain and wind blew in and drove me into the corner under the stone seat, where there was at least still some shelter to be found. I sat huddled there, my knees drawn up under my blanket, my teddy bear clutched tight, and tried all I could to stop myself from coughing my heart out. My chest ached with it, my throat was sore from it. Exhausted, in the end I must have fallen asleep.

  When I woke, it was to the sound of running water. I saw it then, when the lightning flashed. Water was pouring down the chimney into the fireplace below, like a waterfall. I knew what I must do at once. I took my flask down from the ledge where I kept it, unscrewed the top and held it under the flow till it was full. I drank till I could drink no more, and then filled it once again. This time I promised myself I would eke it out, make it last, be sensible. And so I did, so I was. But after that torrential thunderstorm there was no more rain for a while, and very soon the flask was empty again, and all the puddles had dried up in the sun. My ankle was all the colours of the sunset. I looked at it often. I was quite proud of it, and it was less swollen now. I could use it more, but it was still weak.

  The night of the thunderstorm was the last night I can really remember. All I know is that I drifted through the days after that, too weak to climb the rock, or to look any more for a well, contented enough to sit for hours on end in the dunes on the lookout for passing fishing boats. They did pass by, but always far away. I did manage to catch some little crabs in the shallows, and I did knock limpets off the rocks and scoop out the flesh inside. I came across birds’ eggs sometimes and feasted myself on them. They were the best meals I had. I was often sick afterwards. I recall hours spent curled up in my fireplace, clutching my stomach and groaning in agony. It did rain again, never enough to fill my water flask, but somehow I must have managed to collect enough to keep
myself going. I tried always to leave some water in the flask till it rained again, never to drink it all.

  In the end I had neither the strength nor the will to leave my fireplace any more. I was giving up. I knew I was, and I didn’t care. All hope of survival, all hope of rescue was gone. There were times when I felt I was drowning in great waves of sadness. It wasn’t that I had nothing to live for, but rather that I realised now that I would not live. I often thought as I lay there that it would have been better to have slipped off my piano into the sea. It would have been quicker. This way was slow and painful and sad.

  There were moments when the sun shone warm above, and seemed somehow to shiver all the cold and sadness out of me for a while. Then I was glad to be alive again, and could almost believe that where there is life, there is hope. I must have clung to these last vestiges of hope, must have kept drinking water, which is why I was still alive that day, when I heard a voice calling from far away, when I heard footsteps coming towards the house, and saw a boy crouching there in the bracken, holding out his hand to me. When he spoke, his words seemed to be coming from another world.

  IT SOON BECAME OBVIOUS TO Alfie that Lucy knew the whole island like the back of her hand. He trailed around after her as she raced along the tracks, as she leapt through the heather. All Alfie could think about were those words Lucy had spoken. “Wasser” and “gut”. They didn’t sound at all English to Alfie. Gut sounded like ‘good’, but it wasn’t, and wasser like ‘water’, but it wasn’t. Alfie knew what this must mean, that everyone had been right. Lucy was German. There could be no doubts about it now, however much he did not want to believe it. Every word he had ever heard her say could have been German, probably was German, certainly was German. The more he thought about it, the more it had to be so.