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
