Is

by Joan Aiken

  It was plain that the cave roof over Holdernesse had collapsed.

  ‘Stove in like a busted egg,’ said Arun. ‘Lucky we didn’t wait any longer to get out the colliers.’

  Is thought of Grandpa Twite’s funeral procession, and shivered. Where was his coffin now? Washing about in submerged Twite Square among the bodies of Gold Kingy’s army? Where was Gold Kingy?

  ‘And what about London?’ she asked, clutching Lemman again in horror. ‘London’s low-lying too!’

  ‘What about the coast of Kent?’ from Arun, suddenly anxious.

  ‘Well – maybe the waves will have reduced in size by the time they get farther south,’ said the doctor. But he did not sound too hopeful.

  ‘Let’s go to the post office and help Aunt Ishie,’ said Is. ‘That’s summat we can do.’

  To get there, they had to climb over the hill again. There was no way round. Descending the landward side, they found that Corso Mill was now within a quarter-mile of the new coastline. The lower streets of old Blastburn were awash, but the upper ones, with library, post office and rail station, were well above water-level.

  Passing the library they saw on its steps the Gower family – Mrs Macclesfield, her sister, Coppy, a girl who must be Helen, and Mr Gower. He was white, drenched and shivering, but with a look on his face Is would hardly have believed it could wear.

  He ran down to her and gripped both her hands.

  ‘Miss Twite – I cannot tell you – I do not know what to say – my boy – my niece – all restored to me – ’ He stuck there, with his mouth twisting uncontrollably.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Is gruffly, ‘that ain’t no big grig – it’s jist lucky we was able to get ’em all out in time. – See here, Mr Gower,’ she went on, a sudden excellent notion coming into her head, ‘are you in charge here now? Is my Uncle Roy a goner?’

  ‘I – I scarcely know,’ he said, startled. ‘No one has seen him – it seems likely indeed – he and the whole funeral procession were inside the city, or entering it, when the first wave struck. I went down in a boat to reconnoitre, but any attempt at rescue is out of the question; huge masses of water are still washing about inside and, indeed, everybody in there must have been drowned at once.’

  Well, Uncle Roy’s no loss, that’s for sure, thought Is. She went on, ‘Seems to me, Mr Gower, the least you can do is to ship all these colliers back home wherever they come from.’

  ‘That’s a capital notion, dearie,’ agreed Lemman. ‘Though of course we must bear in mind that their homes in the south may also have been flooded. Don’t you agree, Gower, that they should be sent home? There’s naught for them to do here, with the foundries awash and the mine full of water.’

  Mr Gower looked much beset and moithered at having these large responsibilities thrust on him, but Arun, very unexpectedly, suggested, ‘Why not pack the lot of them on the Playland train and send it back?’

  ‘Ay, but what about the track farther south? It may have been flooded.’

  Gower was full of doubts and possible objections, but Lemman said, ‘Just the same, that’s a decidedly happy notion, dear boy; why don’t you go round to the station directly and discover what kind of trim the train is in.’

  ‘What about a driver?’ said Gower fretfully.

  ‘The boy can look about for a driver at the same time.’

  Arun nodded and ran off. He was beginning to look, Is thought, less like a cat, more like a person. I must talk to him some more about Davie, she thought, when we’ve time. I want to hear as much as I can about Davie.

  They went on towards the post office, accompanied by the Gower family. Mr Gower, now that he had run into Lemman, seemed reluctant to lose sight of him, and asked him continual questions.

  ‘What should we do about the drowned people? All that destroyed property – houses, stores, manufactories? Should we try to compile a list of what’s gone – a list of the victims? What is your opinion, Doctor?’

  ‘Why,’ said Lemman rather impatiently, ‘our main duty, as I see it, is to care for those who remain alive. And here we have them,’ he added, as they walked into the sorting office.

  This presented a scene of brisk but orderly activity, with Aunt Ishie and her friends very much in control. Soup, cheese and bread were being distributed in flowerpots, pewter bowls, seedpans, crocks, jugs, baskets – any vessel that could be found and brought into use. Shirts, skirts and breeches were being cut and pieced together from the old mailbags, stitched with expert speed, and eagerly received by the shivering mineworkers. A few of the Bottom Layer were already engaged in useful activity, helping their elderly hosts sort mailbags, pour soup, or fetch fuel for the great iron stove; but a large number of them appeared utterly exhausted and shocked by what they had been through, and could do no more than huddle together and tremble. Most of them could hardly see in daylight, for they had been so long underground that their eyesight had become dimmed.

  ‘Poor dears, it will take them days to recover, I fear,’ said Aunt Ishie. Then she gave Is a hug and a warm commendation: ‘You did well, dearie! You did really well! I’m proud of you, and so would Grandpa have been.’

  ‘Aunt Ishie, did you know all along that the cat-boy was my cousin Arun?’

  Ishie shook her head.

  ‘I understood that his name was Bobbert. And then – yesterday to my astonishment – he comes and tells me who he is – asks for help in providing for the pitworkers – ’

  ‘Did he, now?’ Is tucked this fact away, to be thought about when she was not so busy.

  Dr Lemman was methodically making his way back and forth among the grimy crowd lolling on the flagged floor – which also included workers from the foundries and the potteries – asking them questions about their state of health.

  ‘Carrots: they must eat raw carrots for their poor eyes,’ said Aunt Ishie briskly, and despatched several of her aged helpers (more and more old ladies seemed to be emerging from their secluded moorland dwellings as news of the flood spread about the countryside) to search for wild carrots and healing herbs in woodland or fellside or people’s abandoned gardens.

  ‘I reckon they’d all perk up a sight quicker if they had summat to look forward to,’ remarked Is, and she sent out a thought-message:

  ‘How many of you ’ud like to go back home, if we can fix up some way to get you there? Any offers?’

  She was almost knocked over by the volume of the answer that came back:

  ‘Yes, yes! How soon can we start?’

  ‘Well, we gotta get you on your feet first, cullies, haven’t we? So you eat all the carrots Aunt Ishie can find while we work at fixing up a way to shift you.’ She thought a bit, then added, ‘And keep on talking to each other in thought language. I reckon that’s valuable. Us pit-workers may be the only ones that can do it. We don’t want to lose that, do we?’

  ‘Never!’ came the heartfelt agreement.

  ‘Talk to each other – and tell the coves from the foundries and potteries – get them started too. Maybe we can teach everyone in the world.’

  ‘I could tell ’em all some funny jokes,’ volunteered Mary-Ann, who was cutting up mailbags with professional speed. And several more came through with suggestions for entertainment and instruction: Desmond had made up some arithmetical puzzles; Tess knew rhymes; Mrs Macclesfield unexpectedly said that she could teach them some history. She seemed to be the only adult who, so far, had picked up the trick of talking in thought-waves. ‘It was because of the strength of my link with Helen,’ she said. ‘When she was taken into the mines she called to me and I heard her.’

  Helen Macclesfield, who had been in the mines longer than almost any of the other colliers, was one of the worst sufferers from day-blindness, and was pitifully thin; her arms and legs were like knobbed twigs, her hair and skin were paper-white, but such a huge joy vibrated from her that it was warming just to stand beside her. Already she had a pair of wooden needles and skein of wool and was halfway through making some garment, for, a
s she said, ‘You don’t heed sight for knitting.’

  Halfway through the first day, Aunt Ishie suddenly broke into thought-language. ‘It’s like skating!’ she said in delighted amazement. ‘Why did I never do it before? How wonderful to learn a new skill at my age!’

  And she told them a long story about the witchqueen Dahud, and the submerged city of Is, off Cape Finisterre, where the people are transparent and can see right through each other.

  ‘Like us,’ said Is.

  Now Arun reappeared with a limping, one-eyed man; he seemed vaguely familiar to Is, and then she remembered that she had seen him in the driver’s cab of the Playland Express.

  ‘This here’s Mr Stritch,’ Arun told Lemman and Gower. ‘He’s the only train driver left.’

  And a right shravey cove he looks, thought Is, studying him with disfavour.

  Dr Lemman evidently felt the same.

  ‘Is he the best there is? What happened to the others?’ he asked, coldly scanning Mr Stritch, who threw himself into a paroxysm of nods and bobs and bows and grins, twisting his face up like a paper bag.

  ‘Oh my dear stars, yer honours, ain’t it jist a treat to see all them young ’uns having a lay-easy and a feast, poor young mossels, instead o’ having to work for their living. It do my old ’cart good – that it do!’

  ‘What happened to the other drivers?’ repeated Lemman, without troubling to congratulate Stritch on his benevolence.

  ‘Well, yer honour, two was pressed into service in the army. Gold Kingy was runnin’ short o’ men, see? Me they wouldn’t take, acos of me gammy leg and missing peeper. Otherwise, nat’rally, I’d ’a bin prard to serve me country – ’

  ‘Never mind that. What about the rest?’

  ‘Two run off, time we done our last run to Lunnon town; said they was sick o’ the job. So now I’m all on me loney,’ said Mr Stritch sorrowfully, ‘but ready an’ willin’ to assist yer honours any way I can.’

  ‘Could you teach four or five of these youngsters to drive the train?’ asked Gower.

  ‘Well, Mr Gower, sir,’ said Stritch humbly, ‘traindrivin’s ‘ard, dangerous, difficult work – that I will not deny – ’tis more of a job for a able, strong, clever, growed man than for these puny little pit-sweepings – ’ casting a disparaging glance at the Bottom Layer. But then, hastily recollecting himself, he added, ‘Still I dessay some of ’em’s as clever as they can hold together; if we takes it by slow stages I don’t doubt a few of ’em’ll be able to manage well enough – under my supervision, o’ course.’

  ‘Very well. Do we have any volunteers?’ called Lemman. A dozen hands shot up. One of them was Mary-Ann’s.

  ‘Driving a train ’ud be a sight better trade than going back into the millinery,’ she said.

  ‘My poor drowned mates’d be right happy to know you think so, Missy,’ retorted Stritch, giving her an unfriendly look. ‘Ah, dragged down by Neptune’s sheep, my poor cullies was, along with our beloved leader. With my very own eyes that sorrowful sight I saw, and never did I think that our beautiful train ’ud be under the charge of a passel of rapscallions and females – ’

  ‘You say that you actually witnessed the death of my nephew?’ interrupted Aunt Ishie, who happened to be passing him at that moment with a bundle of canvas. Mr Stritch started in fright at her proximity and gave an anxious, ingratiating bob of the head, backing away.

  ‘Not to tell a lie, I did indeed, ma’am; I was the witness of that fatal end. See, I were sitting on a wall in James Street to watch the percession go by that was to lay your sainted and revered old gent in ’is last resting-place in ’Oldernesse town (I wonder where ’e is now, by the bye?) – an’ there was a troop of ’Ousehold Cavalry bringin’ up the rear, an’ two big old cart-horses a-pulling of the gun-carriage with the coffin on it, an’ be’ind it, Gold Kingy a-riding in ‘is chariot. My two mates was on the cart-horses, them not bein’ accustomed to ’orseback. An’, just as they come by me, down heaves this perdigious great wave, ’igher than the ’ole of Mount Snowdon, I give you my word, an’ tosses ’em all abart like fishbones. And Gold Kingy shouts out real loud: “I kin walk on the water!” ’e yells, “no flood can dram me, I kin walk on the water.”’

  ‘And could he?’ asked Aunt Ishie with deep interest.

  ‘Lord bless you, no, ma’am, that ’e couldn’t. Down under the watter ’e went, same as the rest. All of ’em got washed down James Street and into the entrance to ‘Oldernesse cave – like sand down a sinkpipe.’

  Is shuddered at the thought of what it must be like, now, inside Holdernesse town.

  ‘So now we are fairly certain that my nephew is dead,’ calmly remarked Aunt Ishie.

  Mr Stritch threw her a remarkably sharp look, then assumed a doleful expression and replied, ‘That we are, ma’am, and a sore loss for you, let alone this ’ole country of ours – ’ edging away from her as fast as possible all the time he spoke. When he was a safe distance away he pulled out a large leather snuffbox and helped himself to several massive pinches, at the same time making a quick gesture with his left hand as if to dispel her baneful influence. Indeed the whole atmosphere of the sorting office and the old ladies going about their tasks seemed to make him wretchedly uneasy.

  ‘I’ll be taking the lads back to the station then, sirs. And, come dinner-time, mebbe one o’ the young lasses can bring down their grub, and a bite or two for me. There’ll be plenty for them to do down there, a-working on the ingine.’

  ‘I wouldn’t trust that fellow with a tin halfpenny,’ said Lemman, when Stritch had taken off his band of apprentices.

  ‘Agreed, but he’s the only one we have.’

  ‘Mary-Ann’ll keep an eye on him,’ said Is.

  12

  This is the key of the kingdom . . .

  Is, having better eyesight than most of the others, now went out daily over the nearby hills on a search for wild herbs and roots. From her life in the woods with Penny she had already a rough knowledge of the more commonly used herbs and simples – foxglove, feverfew, marigold, rosehip, sorrel – but under the tuition of Aunt Ishie and Miss Sibley, who made careful little drawings and described the kind of locations where the rarer plants could be found, her knowledge soon became more comprehensive. Arun often accompanied her, since, from roaming and wandering during the time of his cat-hood, he knew the country very well; and he was of great help in scraping away snow or digging for deep roots.

  At first very little was said on these excursions, for Arun had lost the habit of much talk (if indeed he ever had it), but Is felt comfortable in his silent company, and he appeared to feel the same with her. Sometimes he appeared to her more boylike, at other times more catlike. She could not tell what caused these fluctuations, but on the whole, she thought, the human periods began to last longer and come oftener.

  ‘Arun, what turned you into a cat in the first place?’

  ‘It was after Davie died, and they sent me back from the foundries to the mines. I felt like a cat; I was a cat. And I knew a cat could get out of the mine, and I did.’

  That was all he would say.

  ‘Your dad said you used to sing and make up songs,’ she said to him one day. ‘Don’t you do that no more?’

  ‘No,’ he answered, with a shut face. She did not pursue the topic any further. Nor did she ask if he had had any more thoughts about going south. Let’s leave him be for now, she felt.

  He was good at the work they were engaged on, visibly pleased when they uncovered a large patch of wild spinach, a good birch-bark tree, some large bracket-fungi, or a plentiful growth of comfrey (‘so sovereign for low spirits,’ said Aunt Ishie).

  One day, a mild day of thaw, when they were digging out evening-primrose roots, Arun began to tell Is more about his friend Davie. He talked thoughtfally and easily for a long time. In after days, Is could not remember the exact words he had used, but the picture he made was so clear that she almost felt she had met Davie herself, and regretted all the more that she had
not. Davie had been the kind of person, Arun slid, who made you glad to be alive; made you feel there was some point in being alive.

  ‘There aren’t many like that,’ he said seriously.

  ‘No, there bain’t,’ Is agreed.

  Davie, said Arun, had not thought about himself at all; his concern was always for other people, how he could help them. And yet he had not been at all priggish or saintly, but always the best of good company, full of jokes and seeing the funny side to the worst situations.

  ‘It was in the Strand, in London, that I met him firstoff,’ recalled Arun, looking back, ‘and we got talking – about birds, I think it was. Then we used to meet and walk about together. Then he told me he’d heard about the Playland Express and how all the kids was going on it. And he wanted to find what happened to ’em. And he said, ‘Are you game to come with me?’ so I said yes I was.’

  The gentle, reminiscent note in his voice prompted Is to say – rather rashly – ‘Arun, have you thought any more about writing a letter to your mum?’

  Of an evening, in the sorting-office, Aunt Ishie had set the Bottom Layer – those few of them who could read – to sifting the huge heaps of dead letters into batches, arranged under destination, ready for the day when the mails might begin to move again. While they did this one of the old ladies, or Mrs Gower, or Mrs Macclesfield, would often read aloud from some dusty leather-bound volume fetched over from the disused library. At these times Coppy sat wedged between his parents and Helen Macclesfield, curled on the floor, would lean her head against her mother’s knee. Is had once observed Arun watching these family groups with what seemed a look of incredulous envy.

  ‘It must be lonesome for your ma now your dad’s gone. When I go south on the train I could take your letter, and then carry it on to Folkestone. That ain’t too far from Blackheath Edge. She’d be right pleased to hear from you.’

  Without answering the question, Arun said, ‘You reckon to go on the train?’