Listen to the Moon - Michael Morpurgo

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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

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