Is (2 page)

‘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 some 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.

‘Right,' he announced. ‘Ten minutes. Then we'll have a look at what you've drawn and those that look promising we'll make into models to see if they work. Okay, get on with it.'

For a full minute I stared at the blank sheet of paper in front of me. What on earth was I going to draw, I wondered?

I tried to think of some of the bridges in London that I'd been across but couldn't remember anything about them really. After all, a bridge is a bridge, isn't it?

Trevor Smart seemed to have no such problem. He was scribbling away furiously with his pencil. Only occasionally did he stop to scratch his head before pressing on with his grand design.

Oh well, I thought, it's time I did something myself. Mr Phillips had got down from his desk and had started to wander up and down the rows of desks, peering over our shoulders at our handiwork. I couldn't let him see that I had done nothing at all. I drew the lorry as he had done. Then I drew the road underneath it. Next I drew in the wiggly lines to represent the river and did the banks. All I needed was the bridge itself.

In desperation I lightly drew in three round arches underneath the road. I had seen a bridge like that somewhere near my grandmother's house, I remembered. And, surprisingly, it looked all right. Yes, it actually looked like a bridge! So it was that easy after all!

I thickened up the lines and then, feeling pleased with myself, I glanced across at Is to see how she was getting on. Unlike Trev, she was drawing very slowly and was bent over her paper covering it with her arm.

‘Right, just a couple more minutes then we'll have a look at what you've got,' announced Mr Phillips.

There was a flurry of activity, with everyone drawing frantically. Even Kevin Ryder managed to hold his pencil the right way up.

But needless to say it was Trevor Smart who finished first. He put down his pencil and turned over his sheet of paper with a great flourish.

As if that wasn't enough, he sat back in his chair, folded his arms and looked around the room at the rest of us with a stupid grin on his face. ‘Look at me,' his smile seemed to say, ‘aren't I clever?' It got right up my nose, I can tell you. So I did what you would expect me to do – I stuck my 
tongue out at him.

Unluckily for me, my tongue went out at exactly the moment that Mr Phillips turned round to come up between the row of desks I was sitting in and the one Trevor was in.

‘Morgan! How dare you stick your tongue out at me like that?'

‘I wasn't, Sir,' I protested.

‘Don't lie to me, boy, I saw you!' yelled Mr Phillips.

‘But it wasn't you I was sticking my tongue out at, Sir.'

‘If it wasn't me, who was it?' 

‘Trevor, Sir.'

‘Trevor?'

‘Yes, Sir.' The second the words left my mouth, I knew it was completely the wrong thing to say. But then, whatever I said would have been wrong I suppose.

‘Stand up, Morgan,' Mr Phillips instructed and I shuffled to my feet. ‘Are you in the habit of sticking your tongue out at your fellow pupils?'

I had never thought of Trevor as a ‘fellow pupil' before, but I didn't say that. Instead I meekly replied ‘No'.

‘No, what?' screamed Mr Phillips back at me.

‘No, Sir.'

‘Then make sure it does not happen again, Morgan. Clear?'

‘Yes, Sir,' I said, amazed that I had got off so lightly.

My guess was that Mr Phillips detested Trevor as much as the rest of us did and, secretly, would have liked to have stuck his tongue out at him too.

But of course he didn't. Instead he clapped his hands together and yelled out, ‘Right, time's up!'

‘Aw, Sir…' some of the class protested; they hadn't yet finished. Still it was their own fault. They should have been getting on with their bridge drawings instead of listening to Mr Phillips having a go at me.

‘No, I'm sorry, that's it,' said Mr Phillips. ‘Ten minutes is what I said. Okay then, let's see what you've got….' He looked round the room as he wondered who to pick on first and all the while he was sucking his lips noisily. He did this whenever he was thinking – it sounded disgusting.

Anyway I was pleased to see where his gaze came to rest.

‘Ah, Trevor!' said Mr Phillips, ‘Let us all share your view of what this bridge should look like. Hold up your drawing so we can all see, will you?'

Trevor slowly turned over the sheet of drawing paper and, holding it carefully by two corners, he lifted it up. Much as I hate Trevor, I had to admit it wasn't bad. Well, actually, it was very good. Even Mr Phillips was impressed, I could tell.

‘And what sort of bridge have you drawn there, Trevor?' he asked.

‘It's a suspension bridge, Sir,' replied Trev and his smarmy smile returned.

‘Yes, that is correct, Trevor. And could you explain to the class how it works?'

So then Trev launched into this great load of waffle about the bridge being suspended by cables or something. I couldn't really understand a word of what he was saying. It sounded amazingly elaborate, I know that.

Mr Phillips seemed to understand though. His head was going up and down like one of those disgusting nodding dogs you see in the back windows of cars. And the more Clever Trev prattled on, the more Mr Phillips nodded. It was enough to make me want to throw up.