Is (16 page)

Is turned her face towards me. There were tears streaming down, drawing patterns in the dirt on her cheeks.

‘Yes – I think so,' she replied through sniffs. 

‘We could have been – killed.'

‘I know.'

‘But why? Why did you do it?'

‘Don't ask.'

‘That's what you always say.' I felt myself getting infuriated with her again. She'd nearly got us both killed and there wasn't as much as a word of thanks from her.

I sat looking at her, wondering what was going on in that brain of hers. She did look a sight.

Her face was filthy and her hair was all straggly, strands of it stuck to her face with dirt and tears, her coat was ripped (as mine was, I remembered) and her knee looked a right mess.

‘Your knee's still bleeding.'

‘What?' She looked down at her bruised and scraped leg. ‘Oh, yes.'

‘Here.' I produced a handkerchief from my pocket. What I was doing with what was apparently a clean handkerchief I shall never know. I never usually carried one at all, let alone a clean one.

I tied it around her knee as best I could. ‘There.'

‘Thanks.' At last she thanked me, wonders would never cease.

‘Are you going to tell me what all this is about then?'

‘What what's about?'

‘You know, why you ran away?'

‘I would have thought that was obvious.'

‘No. Just because of that bust up with Mr Phillips, you mean?'

‘It was more than that. I felt I was becoming some sort of, I don't know, some sort of freak. Do you know what I mean?'

‘You were going on a bit,' I admitted.

‘How'd you find me then?'

‘Easy!' I managed a small laugh. ‘It's Brunel's birthday isn't it. When I thought about it, I knew this was the only place you could possibly be.'

‘I didn't think you'd remember.' She looked in a distracted way towards the tunnel. ‘I had to be here. I had to. He was a genius, wasn't he?'

‘Isambard?'

‘Who else?'

‘And you still think you're – him?'

‘I'm not so sure now.'

‘Well, that's a relief.'

‘When I was in that tunnel, walking towards the sun there, I felt I was Isambard stronger than I ever had before. Even stronger than when we had that stupid lesson with Mr Phillips about ships.'

‘He was worried too, you know.'

‘Who was? Mr Phillips? You've got to be joking!'

‘No really, he was quite upset. I think he blamed himself for you disappearing.'

‘Serve him right.'

‘Oh come on. Anyway, I'm glad you're feeling better.'

I'd done it again. I'd gone and said something really stupid without thinking. Isabel glared at me, shooting daggers from the depths of her dark eyes. ‘Feeling better? What do you mean “feeling better”? I haven't been ill I'll have you know, Robert Morgan! Do you hear me?'

‘You know what I mean…'

‘No, I don't know what you mean. You think I'm mad, don't you, that's what you think.'

‘Don't be daft.'

‘“Don't be daft”,' she mimicked me. ‘I am not mad as it happens, despite what you might think. You may not believe in reincarnation and things like that, but it happens. People's spirits carry on. I was Isambard Kingdom Brunel in a previous life. I know it.'

‘You said you weren't so sure a few minutes ago.'

‘I KNOW IT!' She screamed at me so hard that spit covered my face. ‘I am Isabel Williams only in body. I really am Isambard Brunel.'

She stood up awkwardly. Then, standing with her injured leg held out stiffly in front of her, she shouted out at the very top of her voice for all the world to hear:

‘I AM ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL!'

I looked up at her, feeling rather scared. Then over her shoulder I saw something else. On the top of the road bridge, leaning over the parapet, a dozen or more people had gathered.

Not only that, but, making their way along from the bridge down the side of the tracks were a policeman and a policewoman.

We didn't have to bother with hitching lifts back home. We had a ride in a police car. Someone had noticed us down there by the tunnel mouth and called the police.

By the time we got back home, everyone knew what had happened. There was quite a reception committee waiting for us at the police station. Mum and Dad were there, and Mrs Williams. A reporter from the local paper and loads of others. They all kept asking us questions all the time. Is sat there, stony faced, and said nothing. All I wanted to do was sleep. And, without warning, that's exactly what I did there and then, in the police station: fell asleep.

* * *

When I finally woke it was like I'd had a bad dream. I was back home in my bed. I rubbed my eyes and sat up. It was late Sunday afternoon. My mum came in with a cup of tea as soon as she heard me stir.

‘Here you are,' she said and sat on the edge of my bed with a smile.

‘How's Is?' was the first thing I said.

‘Oh, she's fine, I think. None the worse for wear. How about you?' 

‘Okay.'

‘Good.' 

‘Mum…'

‘Yes, Rob?'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘We won't say another word about it. I'm just glad you're safe and sound. And glad Isabel is as well.'

‘Can I go and see her. I'd like that.'

‘I expect so. Tomorrow. But just you rest for a bit first, eh?'

But when tomorrow came I didn't see Is. And, to be honest, I don't think I had really expected to. Mr Gregory swept into the class in his usual bull-like fashion and started going through the register. But, when he got to Williams, he stopped. ‘Isabel Williams, I have to tell you,' he said solemnly, ‘will not be returning to us at St Leonards School. Her mother has wisely decided to take her to another school. In Devon, I understand, where she has relatives.' And that was that.

* * *

All this happened more than thirty years ago.

A lot can happen in that time. Is's mum sold the house in Walton Road a few months after they moved to Devon. Originally they had gone to stay with Is's Aunt Kate – her dad's sister (I didn't even know she had an aunt) who lived in Plymouth. But, when the house was sold, her mum bought a little cottage on the edge of Dartmoor.

Is wrote to me to tell me all about it. It was quite small, she said, with tiny windows and a little winding staircase – but quite lovely and built from local granite. ‘It's been here for centuries and I doubt it'll ever fall down,' she wrote, ‘it's as if it were carved right out of the hillside itself.' It was no surprise that she went on to say that Ashburton itself used to be at the end of a Great Western Railway branch line, built of course to Brunel's 7- foot wide broad gauge. A preservation society was apparently running steam trains along some of the old line, so no doubt she was happy about that.

She also said she'd been to see what she described as ‘Brunel's last and greatest bridge, completed the year he died': the Royal Albert Bridge across the River Tamar, separating Devon from Cornwall. I must say I was pleased to hear her talking about Brunel as another person and not herself. Perhaps she was finally accepting that she was Isabel Williams, plain and simple.

We exchanged quite a few letters and she sent me some photographs once, including some of the small terrier dog she called ‘Brandy', which she used to take out on the moors. I kept her up to date with what was happening at school, especially the great news that old Phillips had got sacked for losing his temper good and proper one day and hitting one of the boys in the first year really hard. Serve him right – Phillips, that is, not the boy.

But then, in the way these things do, the letters became fewer and eventually stopped. The last I heard she was going to move again but she didn't say where. ‘Going West' was all she said.

I haven't kept in touch with anyone else much from Class 2F. Although I did get invited to Veronica Biggleswade's wedding a good few years ago, but I couldn't go – I can't remember why. And I bet even as you read this, someone, somewhere is being bored stupid by Clever Trevor.

One incredible bit of news I did pick up was that Kevin Ryder actually managed to become famous (for all of a week). He formed a band called the ‘Electric Shavers' some time in the 80s, which was a sort of post-punk band, a bit like the Psychedelic Furs so people said. Since I had no idea who the Psychedelic Furs were that wasn't a very useful comparison. But (difficult to believe, I know) the Electric Shavers had a record that actually scraped into the top forty.

I never got any money back on my investment though.

I ended up working as a journalist for a local newspaper and then for various magazines in London. And it was while working for one of them that I found myself having to do some research about Brunel for an article I was writing. I spent some time in the Science Museum, which I hadn't been to since that day when Is first showed me the model of the Great Eastern. It was still where we'd left it, in its glass case. The Caerphilly Castle, the steam engine where Kevin Ryder had accused Is and me of having ‘a little cuddle by the choo-choos', wasn't there any longer, though. It was moved in 1999 to the Great Western Railway Museum in Swindon, where it still is as far as I know.

I also spent a few hours in the Brunel Museum in Rotherhithe, which is at the other end of the tunnel under the Thames where Is first announced to me her conviction that she was Isambard Brunel reincarnated. It was there I first heard about Brunel's older sister Sophia. She, it seems, was extremely talented – able to discuss engineering matters with her brother and father with complete authority. In fact, her knowledge of engineering was so good that she was described by Lord Armstrong (another famous Victorian engineer) as ‘Brunel in Petticoats'. I wonder if Is ever knew that. It would make her smile, I bet. Sophia went on to marry Benjamin Hawes, who became a government minister and Sir Benjamin Hawes – so she became Lady Hawes. In Victorian times, of course, there was no chance of her becoming an engineer like her father and brother even if she had wanted to.

Finally, about three years ago, having got fed up with the rat race, I and my family moved to West Wales. We moved to Pembrokeshire away from all the hustle and bustle of London. As it turned out, though, I didn't get away from Brunel. Where we moved to was a few miles from a place called Neyland, a small town with a few shops and a marina on the banks of Milford Haven. A hundred and fifty years ago it was where Brunel decided to site the far western terminus of his Great Western Railway.

Despite having lived in Pembrokeshire for three years, I hadn't actually been to Neyland until about six months ago. There's hardly anything left of what was a major railway terminus now; just a few lengths of railway line buried in tarmac. But there are some railings actually made from Brunel's original broad-gauge track, which must be very rare. From Neyland, packet steamers and other boats would go to Ireland and beyond. The water in Milford Haven is incredibly deep and so the largest ships can come in and out easily. Today huge oil tankers use the haven all the time. And I wasn't surprised to find out that Brunel's monster ship the Great Eastern twice came into Neyland for repairs. The Great Eastern! I can remember the day Is stormed out of Mr Phillips' class as if it were yesterday. That great ship – a ship that was really too big, too ahead of her time – only managed to make money laying the first telephone cables across the Atlantic. She was the only ship large enough to carry the 3000 miles of cable needed to reach America. Another connection with America was made that day I went to Neyland. To be honest I'm not even sure why I went, but I parked the car and walked along the quay where the station would have been. I'd bought a sandwich and newspaper and I sat on a bench overlooking the haven, watching some yachts sail up and down. I opened my packet of sandwiches and took a bite while enjoying the sun and light breeze on my face. Then I opened the newspaper… and couldn't believe my eyes. Staring back at me was Is! It was definitely her. I hadn't seen her for more than 30 years, but it was unmistakably her. I was so astonished at seeing her photograph that it took me a couple of minutes to realise why it was there. Underneath the picture the headline read: ‘British Engineer in First Manned Mission to Mars'.

My hands were shaking with excitement as I continued reading. ‘One of the teams working on the project,' the article said ‘is led by a woman engineer from Britain called Isabel Williams.' Not only a British engineer; not only a woman engineer – but Is! As if to convince myself that it was true, I read it out loud: ‘NASA describes Isabel Williams as an extremely talented engineer whose contribution is invaluable to the project. She has the flair and imagination to think the unthinkable, to think big and to make things happen.'

‘Of course she does!' I yelled. ‘Of course she does!'