Is Read online

  Contents

  New Article

  Dedication

  This is Is

  An Arch Rival

  River Walk

  Under the River

  Father Figure

  A Cause for Concern

  Another Piece of the Puzzle

  Big is Beautiful

  Sink or Swim

  Is is Gone

  Thumbs Up

  Towards the Light

  Isambard Kingdom Brunel

  Copyright

  Is

  Derek Webb

  For Briony with much love and thanks for her inspiration, enthusiasm and encouragement.

  1

  This is Is

  It was during my second year of secondary school that I first met Is. Mr Gregory, our form master, swept into our classroom like a great black bat one morning with Is in tow. We didn’t see her at first because she was so tiny, even though she was twelve. Or maybe she was cowering behind Mr Gregory, who really could look very frightening with his black cape on. All the masters at our school wore these capes. Not many teachers do now of course, but this was in 1972 and things were very different then.

  ‘Good morning, boys and girls,’ Mr Gregory wheezed and his lips drew back as he spoke, exposing his horrible yellowing teeth.

  None of us in Class 2F knew why Mr Gregory didn’t go and see a dentist with his teeth. Maybe he couldn’t find one brave enough to peer into his mouth. I certainly wouldn’t have liked to be a dentist coming face to face with Mr Gregory’s molars, I can tell you.

  Nevertheless, we all chanted back at him in unison: ‘Good morning, Mr Gregory!’

  ‘I bring you a new girl!’ exclaimed Mr Gregory, as if he was bringing a sacrifice to some ancient ritual. Which, come to think of it, he was.

  Is scurried forward like a rabbit, her tiny eyes darting everywhere before her. She looked so pathetic and wimpish that most of us couldn’t help giggling at the sight of her, until old Gregory yelled out ‘Quiet!’

  ‘I will not have this behaviour in my class!’ he bellowed, and the vein on his neck grew bigger and redder and even more disgusting than usual.

  Mr Gregory on a bad day was enough to send shivers through the toughest nuts in the whole of St Leonards School – even oiks like Wilkins up in the sixth form knew not to cross him.

  For the newcomer to our class, standing there feebly in front of this great bull of a man, it must have been a truly terrifying experience. Mr Gregory had by now mounted the podium on which his desk was perched and he lifted his great carcass on to the top of the desk and sat there with one foot on the floor and the other dangling loose.

  ‘This is Isabel Williams,’ Mr Gregory continued, indicating Is with his foot. ‘She is joining us today and I want you all to make her welcome. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Gregory,’ we all muttered with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

  ‘Good! Right, Isabel, you can go and sit yourself down at that empty desk next to Robert Morgan there.’ And he actually nudged Isabel towards me with the tip of his shoe.

  She sat down quietly and Mr Gregory went through the morning’s ritual of doing the register with everyone calling out ‘Here, Sir’ as their name was read out.

  When he got to ‘Williams’, there was no answer and Mr Gregory repeated her name more loudly. Still she didn’t respond, and this time Mr Gregory accompanied his shout of ‘Isabel Williams’ with the thwack of a metal ruler on the desk. Isabel jumped at this and answered in a small, trembling voice.

  ‘Here, Sir.’

  ‘I am so glad you’re awake, Isabel,’ replied Mr Gregory sarcastically. He ticked the register and then continued to the last boy.

  ‘Wilson.’

  ‘Here, Sir!’

  ‘Good!’ The book was slammed shut and pushed across the desk and we all filed out to the school hall for assembly.

  We weren’t allowed to talk in class of course. So it wasn’t until lunchtime that I first spoke to Isabel. Most of the kids in my class had school dinners, but because I lived so close to the school, I used to go home instead. I was setting off as usual across the playground when I saw her on her own by the school gate. I don’t often talk to girls, not even the ones in my class, but Is looked so miserable and was sort of staring at me, so I felt I had to do something.

  ‘Hello,’ I said gruffly, ‘why aren’t you with the others? They’ll all be stuffing their faces by now!’ She just looked up at me and said nothing, then I realised that she obviously didn’t know where to go.

  ‘Hasn’t anyone bothered to show you where they serve lunch. What a load of ignoramuses!’

  ‘No, it’s not that,’ she replied. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Not hungry?’

  ‘Well, to tell you the truth I haven’t brought any money for school dinners. No one said anything about it.’

  ‘But didn’t your parents give you any money?’ I asked, astonished.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But that’s silly. You’ve got to eat something.’ I sounded like my mother. ‘Haven’t you got any money at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And didn’t anybody ask your mother when she brought you along this morning?’

  ‘I came on my own.’

  ‘You don’t live far then?’ I said, relieved that she’d be able to go home for lunch.

  ‘Walton Road.’

  ‘Walton Road? But that’s miles! You got the school bus did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bike?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you walked.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I stared at her for a few seconds, amazed that her parents would let her walk all that way to school and not even give her money for a school lunch. Then I looked at the new watch I’d got for my birthday.

  ‘Oh no, is that the time? My mum’ll kill me! I’ll see you later, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ she replied and I set off down the tarmac path towards the road. But something was bothering me. I hadn’t quite got to the end when I had a thought.

  ‘You can come back with me if you like. I only live two roads away. I’m sure my mum will find you something to eat.’

  For the first time I saw her smile. Her face lit up at the idea. But the smile faded just as quickly as a question crossed her mind.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘She won’t mind?’

  ‘Nah, don’t be daft. Come on!’

  We were over ten minutes late by the time we got back to my house and Mum was not in the best of moods.

  ‘And what time do you call…’ she started to say and then realised that I wasn’t on my own.

  ‘Sorry we’re late,’ I said in my best, most apologetic voice.

  ‘So I should think. Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend then?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said again, ‘this is Isabel.’

  ‘Is.’

  ‘Sorry? Is what, dear?’ said my mother.

  ‘My name’s Isabel,’ she explained. ‘But my friends call me Is.’

  ‘This is Is. Is is her name!’ I said laughing.

  And then I knew I would be very good friends with her.

  ‘Oh it is, is it?’ replied my mother, joining in the joke at last. ‘And I suppose you’d like some of Robert’s lunch would you, Is?’

  ‘Oh, no; not at all, Mrs Morgan. I’m not in the slightest bit hungry, really.’

  ‘Yes she is, Mum,’ I said. ‘Are there some extra chips or something that – er – Is could have?’

  Mum smiled. ‘Oh, I expect so. Just sit yourselves down at the table while I have a look,’ she said and went off into the kitchen.

  ‘Your mum’s really nice,’ whispered Is as we pulled out the chairs.

  ‘Nice? Mum?’
r />   I’d never really considered the possibility before, but I supposed she was right. ‘She’s okay,’ I answered with a shrug.

  ‘I wish mine was like her.’

  ‘What’s your mum like then?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s my stepmother,’ Is replied and then she lowered her voice until I could barely hear her. ‘And she’s a cow.’

  The way she said it, with such feeling, I remember actually being shocked.

  ‘Oh,’ was all I could answer.

  ‘My real mum died soon after I was born,’ she explained. ‘And my dad got remarried when I was four. Probably couldn’t cope on his own.’

  ‘S’pose not.’

  But then we were interrupted by my mum reappearing with two plates of beefburgers and chips.

  ‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘Get this down you.’

  She set the plates down in front of us and then suddenly realised something.

  ‘Oh, I am sorry Is, I clean forgot to ask… you do like beefburgers, don’t you? You’re not vegetarian or anything?’

  ‘Yes thanks, Mrs Morgan, they’re my favourite.’

  ‘Oh, good!’ She breathed a sign of relief. ‘I’m so glad and these are ones I made myself too. They’re not like your shop-bought ones. Much nicer.’

  ‘Where do they come from then, Mum?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, originally from a cow of course,’ she answered, with a smile on her face. But she didn’t expect the reaction she got from the two of us. Is and I had both collapsed in a fit of giggles at the mere mention of ‘cow’.

  ‘Well, I didn’t think it was quite that funny!’ said my mum, perplexed.

  ‘It wasn’t, Mrs Morgan…’ Isabel started saying without thinking.

  ‘Pardon?’ said my mother with a touch of annoyance in her voice.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean it wasn’t funny,’ explained Isabel, keen to correct any misunderstanding. ‘I mean it was funny, but not in the way you meant it. Do you see?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t. Anyway you two, get on and eat up or you’ll be late back to school.’

  * * *

  After that it began to be a bit of a habit for Is to come back and have lunch at my place. She came round a couple of times a week at least. The other days she used to have sandwiches, but I don’t remember her once eating school dinners. No wonder she was so terribly small.

  Looking back on it, it was a terrible cheek really. Not that Mum minded. Well, not too much I don’t think. Although she did mention it once in a roundabout sort of way.

  ‘Does Isabel not have any other friends then, Robert?’ she asked me out of the blue one evening, as she looked up from the magazine she was reading.

  ‘I don’t know. Why?’ I asked in return. Then I thought a bit more and added ‘She goes around with Ronnie – you know, Veronica Biggleswade – and sometimes I see her after school with Susan Timson. But not that many, no.’

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ was all Mum said to that and went straight back to her magazine.

  That got me thinking. It was true that Is didn’t hang around with hardly any of the other kids in our class, except me. She always seemed to keep herself to herself. Nothing wrong with that of course. But it did mean that the school bullies couldn’t resist talking the mickey out of her.

  ‘What’s up, Isabel,’ someone like Kevin Ryder would say if they caught her standing on her own in a corner of the playground. ‘Don’t no one wanna come near you then? Got BO have you? Smell do you? Bit of a stinker are you, eh? Don’t you wash then? Eh? Eh?’

  And then he would go around the playground yelling out ‘Isabel’s got smelly armpits’. Or something equally offensive.

  Some people just don’t have any brains.

  It didn’t seem to bother Isabel though. Most of the time she just ignored them and that’s usually the best thing to do, of course. People got fed up with teasing her and it having no effect. In the end they gave up. After all, there’s no point in calling someone names if they don’t seem to care. Where’s the fun in that?

  I admired her for that. She never seemed to lose her temper and rarely even answered back. So, when she did, it was all the more surprising. Especially as it wasn’t a brainless idiot like Kevin that she lost her temper with, but with Mr Phillips, our Physics teacher.

  2

  An Arch Rival

  The school we were at was called a grammar school and I suppose we were very lucky to be there, although we certainly didn’t think so at the time. Many of our friends had gone to the local comprehensive school instead. Back then comprehensives were quite a new idea and there were lots of people saying they were a rotten idea and just as many saying they were great. Frankly I couldn’t care less either way. I mean, school’s school isn’t it? Whatever you call it. And I certainly didn’t see being at my school as a good thing. It could be very boring.

  It was on a Wednesday morning that we did Physics. We all trooped in and sat at our usual desks. Is was given a desk across the aisle from me, near the front of the class.

  Mr Phillips started the lesson by going through a lot of the usual boring stuff and finding out what we’d remembered from last term, which wasn’t much.

  The one thing I remembered was how light is reflected when it strikes a highly polished surface. Since last term they’d put in some new spotlights at the front of the classroom. The funny thing was that Mr Phillips had a really bald head and one of these spotlights was aimed right at it.

  Talk about dazzling!

  Poor old Mr Phillips. He wasn’t that old really either, well not that old. He’d just lost his hair early – probably having to deal with the ‘likes of us’ as he put it. Anyway, today, how light behaves obviously wasn’t the subject of his lesson.

  ‘Right,’ he started, ‘for today’s exercise, I want you all to imagine you’re building a bridge over a river. Now it’s a very wide river, so you’ll need to take that into account.’

  Trevor Smart’s hand shot up. ‘How wide exactly, Sir?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Trevor. Let’s say 130 feet.’ In those days, of course, we still used to measure everything in yards, feet and inches.

  Trevor’s hand shot up again. ‘Is it a very deep river, Sir?’

  Trevor Smart was, not surprisingly, known as ‘Clever Trevor’ because he was always sticking his hand up and asking the stupidest questions.

  ‘It’s deep enough, Trevor, okay?’

  ‘What’s the ground like either side of the river, Sir? Is it rock or clay or what?’

  I turned and was amazed to find that it wasn’t Clever Trevor asking the question this time, it was Is. ‘Does it really matter, Isabel?’ asked Mr Phillips with a frown on his face.

  ‘Well, yes, it’s really very important, Sir,’ replied Is.

  ‘It’s rock, all right. The bridge is 130 feet wide and the ground either side is rock. Satisfied?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Sir.’

  ‘Good, well if we can all get on… as I was saying, for today’s exercise, I’d like you to draw a bridge. It can be any kind of bridge you like. But it has to be strong enough to support a road that carries a lot of heavy traffic, okay?’

  Mr Phillips looked around the classroom for response. He got none.

  Undaunted he carried on. ‘There are basically four types of bridge. Now I won’t expect you to know all of them.’ Just as well. ‘But hopefully you will come up with a couple of different types amongst you.’ Miracles might happen, his voice seemed to say.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘what you need to

  think about is how you are going to support the weight on the bridge and what is going to prevent it from falling down. Is that clear?’

  He looked around the classroom at a sea of what seemed to be staring, blank faces.

  ‘Oh, good grief,’ he muttered as he picked up a chalk.

  In those days, schools didn’t have white-boards, but large blackboards which teachers wrote on with chalk. You still see them behind the whiteboards in s
ome schools. (Confusingly, these ‘blackboards’ were often green!) There were usually two of them which slid up and down on runners, one behind the other, so you could write on one and then pull the other down to carry on, which is what Mr Phillips did.

  ‘Look and pay attention any of you who aren’t clear,’ he said. ‘If this is a lorry…’

  He drew a box shape on the board and then drew two circles under it.

  ‘And this is the road it’s sitting on…’ he drew a line below the box shape. ‘And this is the river…’ he drew some wiggly lines underneath. ‘Then how are you going to support the road and the lorry?’

  ‘With a bridge, Sir!’ yelled out Clever Trev, all excited.

  ‘Of course, with a bridge, boy!’ screamed back Mr Phillips. ‘That is what I am asking you to draw!’ Mr Phillips took a deep breath. Then he sat down and pushed his glasses up on top of his shiny bald head.

  A few seconds later he let out a deep sigh.

  Then he pulled the glasses back down again and peered through them with his piggy eyes.

  Finally he clasped his hands together in front of him, like he was praying, before speaking again.

  ‘Let me give you a bit of help shall I?’ He smiled a sickly smile around the room and we all looked away when it was pointing in our direction.

  ‘Just think of some of the bridges you know…’

  ‘I don’t know no bridges,’ said Steven Clarke with a sullen look on his face.

  ‘You don’t know any bridges,’ replied Mr Phillips. ‘Not you don’t know no bridges.’

  ‘I know, that’s what I said,’ answered Steven, failing to get the point.

  Mr Phillips sighed and carried on. ‘I’m sure you all know some bridges, even young Clarke here. How many of you have been to London, for example?’

  Since we were only about twenty-five miles from London, everyone put their hands up, including Steven.

  ‘Right. Good,’ continued Mr Phillips. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. So think about all the bridges in London that cross the Thames. Battersea Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, Hammersmith Bridge, Putney Bridge… Tower Bridge even. Try and remember one of them and draw that if you like.’

  After that he simply stared at us all, as if daring us to ask any more questions. No one did.